


The Clan of the Cave Slayer.

by steeleye



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Quest For Fire (Movie), Walking With Beasts
Genre: Gen, Pre-historic action adventure, Pre-historic humour, Pre-historic vampire slayers and vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-08 02:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15921088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steeleye/pseuds/steeleye
Summary: Inspired by the BtVS episode 'Beer Bad'. Long, long ago, before there were shoe shops, before there were even shoes! When a pointy bit of wood was thought of as hi-tech, there was also ‘Shine the Night-Walker Hunter’ and her clan!“No! No-way,” Elm laughed nervously, “that’s major mojo, way above my level. Talking to animals and such that’s me. Making fire? That’s like totally messing with primal forces and who knows where that might lead…yeah, well, I’ll tell you where it leads! It’ll lead to my hair and eyes turning black and the destruction of everything we know and understand…personally I’d rather be eaten by lions!”“So,” Shine looked at her clan one by one, “you’re trying to tell me thatno oneknows how to totally make fire?”





	1. Chapter 1

The Clan of the Cave-Slayer.

By Steeleye.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Quest for Fire or Walking with Beasts, I write these stories for fun not profit.

 **Crossover:** ‘Quest for Fire’ and ‘Walking with Beasts (ep6)’.

 **Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar:** Written in glorious UK-English (the original and best) which is different to US-English.

 **Timeline:** Many, many years BB (that’s Before Buffy).

 **Words:** Twelve chapters of about 3000+ words each.

 **Warnings:** Look out for that Mammoth!

 **Summary:** Inspired by the BtVS episode 'Beer Bad'. Long, long ago, before there were shoe shops, before there were even shoes! When a pointy bit of wood was thought of as hi-tech, there was also ‘Shine the Night-Walker Hunter’ and her clan!

“No! No-way,” Elm laughed nervously, “that’s major mojo, way above my level. Talking to animals and such that’s me. Making fire? That’s like totally messing with primal forces and who knows where that might lead…yeah, well, I’ll tell you where it leads! It’ll lead to my hair and eyes turning black and the destruction of everything we know and understand…personally I’d rather be eaten by lions!”

“So,” Shine looked at her clan one by one, “you’re trying to tell me that _no one_ knows how to totally make fire?”

0=0=0=0

**The Hunt.**

Crawling through the long, dry, late summer grass, Shine felt the sun warm her back. Pausing she gripped her spear more tightly as she listened to the two bucks crash their antlers together as they fought for dominance of the herd and the right to mate with the females. Lifting her head slowly, she glanced through the tops of the gently swaying grass, the bucks where less than a long spear throw away. Taking the time to look slowly to her left and right she saw movement in the grass that denoted the presence of Lone-Hunter and One-Eye.

The three hunters had the two great deer just where they wanted them; once the trap was sprung if the bucks tried to run away they’d run into the woods behind them. In amongst the closely spaced trees the buck’s great antlers, twice as wide as Shine was tall, would catch on the trunks of the trees and prevent the bucks from escaping. If the bucks chose to run towards the hunters; well, Shine smiled, that would just make her job easier.

Glancing back at the bucks, Shine checked on their position again before ducking her head down below the tops of the grass storks so that the bucks wouldn’t sense her. Although they were down wind of the bucks and the three hunter’s bodies where smeared with a paste that not only kept the flies from bothering them, but also disguised their scent. Some animals could tell when a hunter watched them too closely; a hunter could only overcome the buck’s magic by being skilful and careful.

Whistling a soft bird call, Shine signalled her friends to move closer, although she’d probably be able to hit one of the bucks with her spear and throwing stick from here the other two hunters couldn’t, they needed to be closer. They also needed to be sure of killing at least one of the bucks, winter was fast approaching and they’d need time to smoke and dry meat for the long, cold winter days ahead.

Freezing in mid crawl, Shine listened carefully, the bucks had stopped fighting, had they noticed the approach of the hunters, or had they just grown exhausted with their long struggle? Risking a look, Shine raised her head above the grass again. Her light coloured hair, almost the same colour as the dried grass, was perfect camouflage. As long as the bucks didn’t smell her they probably wouldn’t see her and try to escape the trap. Peeping through the grass, Shine found herself staring right into the eyes of the bigger of the two bucks.

“F’oook!” Shine breathed angrily; any moment now the buck would realise it was in danger and try to run, jumping to her feet she started to shout and run towards the buck.

Hearing her cry, Lone-Hunter and One-Eye jumped to their feet too; shouting and waving their arms and weapons about they started to run towards the bucks. Seeing the humans apparently spring from the ground the bucks took fright, turned and started to flee.

“AYE! AYE! HAAA!” Shine’s high pitched hunting cry mixed with the calls of Lone-Hunter and One-Eye as they rushed to trap the bucks against the wood.

The bigger of the two bucks, realised his mistake just as he came to the first outlying trees. While the younger buck wasted time trying to force his way between the trees, the older wiser animal turned and started to charge at the hunters.

“HA!” Shine grinned as she ran, “Come to my spear!”

Fitting her spear into the grove of her throwing stick, Shine altered the direction of her charge a little and turned towards the older buck. Her joy at seeing the buck coming towards her quickly faded as she realised that the buck wasn’t running it was charging and it was charging towards One-Eye. Groaning to herself, Shine pumped her legs faster to try and get closer so when she threw her spear she’d be sure of hitting and killing the buck. One-Eye wasn’t the best of hunters, his talents were directed more towards making weapons and tools, but he still came on the occasional hunt to prove his manhood.

Not that Shine or any of the clan would think any less of One-Eye if he didn’t hunt, but he did and could usually be relied on not to do anything foolish. As long as he was with Lone-Hunter or Shine who’d tell him what to do and where to go he was adequate enough. Add this to the fact that Shine thought of him as a brother, she didn’t want to see him impaled on the buck’s antlers or trampled under his hooves.

As luck would have it, as the buck turned towards One-Eye it exposed its flank to Shine. Smiling once more, she drew back her arm being careful to keep her thumb over the top of her spear so it wouldn’t fall out of the groove of her throwing stick. Lifting her left arm as if reaching for the buck she took careful aim and brought her right arm forward. Driven towards its target by the un-natural strength of her arm and the leverage supplied by the throwing stick, her spear flew straight and true towards its target.

Hitting the buck, Shine’s spear made a solid sounding *THWACK!* as the flint spearhead easily penetrated the buck’s hide. The spear buried itself in the buck with such force that it didn’t stop until the tip of the spearhead pocked from the other side of the buck’s body. With a surprised grunt the buck took a couple of faltering steps before it fell to its knees. Stumbling to the ground it coughed blood onto the dry grass as it breathed its last before falling over onto its side, dead.

“ONE-EYE!” Shine cried out as she ran up to her friend, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” One-Eye rested on his spear as he panted and tried to catch his breath.

“Very clever!” Lone-Hunter smiled as he ran over to join his clan-mates.

“Clever?” One-Eye asked in confusion, “I so very nearly became an antler ornament, what’s so clever about that?”

“Oh!?” Lone-Hunter sounded puzzled, but Shine could see the twinkle of amusement in the big hunter's eyes, “So you’re saying that getting the buck to chase you and trample you into the ground wasn’t part of a cunning plan to distract him so Shine or I could kill him?”

“No!” One-Eye replied shortly, he knew when he was being mocked.

“Oh,” Lone-Hunter shook his head, “sorry, if I’d know this wasn’t part of your clever plan I’d have come quicker.”

“Thanks,” One-Eye scowled; Lone-Hunter was fairly new to the clan and One-Eye still didn’t know where he stood with the man.

“Okay, guys,” Shine started to tug on her spear trying to free it from the side of the buck, “less joking and more working,” she glanced up to where the sun was starting to sink towards the horizon. “We have this fine buck, that One-Eye lured onto my spear,” she winked at Lone-Hunter and didn’t quite suppress a grin, “to butcher before the lions notice what we’ve done.”

“Hey!” One-Eye gave Shine a slightly hurt look, “Not wanting to be eaten here,” One-Eye announced as he drew a flint knife from his belt and fell on the dead buck.

“Right there with you,” agreed Lone-Hunter who’d dropped his spear and drew his own knife before getting to work next to One-Eye as he cut the buck into manageable chunks.

“UUUGH!” Groaned Shine as she tugged on her spear, it wouldn’t budge, “F’oook it!” She gave up tugging on the weapon, the spear would come free once they’d butchered the animal.

Giving up, she drew her own knife and got to work helping her friends. Working quickly they soon had the buck cut up. Things like the liver and brains were put into skin bags to be carried home. The brains would be eaten by the hunters to give them power over the next buck they hunted. The liver would be given to Mother and Chase who were both heavily pregnant, it would make them and their babies strong and more able to survive the winter. The meat would be either cooked and eaten now or smoked and dried and kept for the winter when the hunting wasn’t so good.

Even as the three hunters had gathered together all the meat they could carry they noticed there was still a lot of meat left. Looking down at the remains of the buck, Shine shook her head in sorrow, it had been a really big animal one of the biggest she’d ever seen. If they’d been closer to home they could have called, Moon-Wolf, Night-Watcher and maybe even Elm and Dusk to help carry it home. An animal like this one could last the clan nearly all winter.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Lone-Hunter said to Shine as she stood over the carcass, “pity to leave all that meat for the wolves and lions.”

“I’m not worried so much about the wolves,” Shine’s people had a truce with the wolf clan that shared the valley with them; the two clans left each other alone as much as they could. “They know not to attack us and we always leave them something, it’s the lions I don’t want to encourage. Leave meat lying around for them and by next spring you’re knee deep in lion cubs and the spring after that you’re fighting them off with a stick!”

“What’s up?” One-Eye joined his two friends.

“It’s a pity to leave all this nice meat for the lions,” Shine pointed out.

“Hmmmm,” One-Eye scratched his head and adjusted his eye patch, a sure sign that he was thinking. “Hold on a moment.”

Drawing his knife, One-Eye started to skin the hide off the deer from the parts that hadn’t been cut up when they’d been butchering the animal.

“Come on, One-Eye,” Shine cast a worried glance towards the sun as it hurried towards the horizon; soon it would be disappearing behind the trees and at night there were much worse things than lions in the valley. “We’ve not time to skin its hide.”

“No, help me,” One-Eye cut quickly with his knife, “we cut the hide up into long strips, tie them together like a rope and then use it to hang the rest of the meat up in one of the tall trees.”

“YES!” Lone-Hunter knelt down next to One-Eye and started to help him, he glanced at One-Eye as he worked, “You know I was only joking earlier don’t you? I’d hate to see you eaten or trampled on…”

“Hey,” Shine got down to join the two men, she looked at One-Eye, “you know he’s only keeping you alive so he doesn’t have to mate with Chase.”

“Look,” One-Eye paused in his work and glanced at his friends, “there’s nothing wrong with Chase…”

“If you say so,” Shine looked at Lone-Hunter and rolled her eyes.

Chase was nice enough, if you didn’t have to be with her all the time, she’d been a good mother even if her first baby had died. The child had just not woken up one morning, these things happened it was nothing that Chase had done or not done. But, Chase did seem to think that the world was for her benefit and she had plans on being Mother when Shine’s mother eventually died or gave up the leadership of the clan.

Very soon the three hunters had a pile of rough, bloody hide which they tied into long strips.

“You know this isn’t going to be as strong as proper rope,” Shine pointed out, normally they plated lengths of hide together to make rope.

“Cut the meat into smaller pieces?” One-Eye suggested.

Shine cast a worried glance towards the sun; it was touching the tops of the trees now. By the time they got anywhere near home it’d be fully dark.

“Okay, but be quick,” Shine agreed.

0=0=0=0

Spears in their hands and loads of meat on their backs the three hunters ran across the open grass between the stands of trees. By keeping to the clear areas they stood more chance of seeing anything that might attack them. If they did they could dump some of the meat and run on. Hopefully if it was lions chasing them they’d be distracted, but if it was something else, something worse, Shine would have to dump her load and turn and fight. That was her job, her destiny as Night-Watcher called it.

By the time they came to the river below the cliffs where the clan’s cave was, One-Eye and Lone-Hunter were breathing heavily; Shine wasn’t, she’d have to run a lot further and harder before she lost her breath. Stopping on the bank of the river, Shine looked back at the dark trees that they’d just had to pass through.

“What’s wrong?” Lone-Hunter asked as he came to stand next to Shine, he clutched his spear ready to fight, “Lions?”

“No,” Shine shook her head, “worse than Lions.” Looking up at the tall hunter, Shine sighed, she knew he wanted to stay with her and fight, but she also knew that would just get him killed. “Go, get the meat and One-Eye back home. Build up the fire and have Moon-Wolf patrol. You and One-Eye must protect the clan, okay?”

“But…” Lone-Hunter started to object.

“NO!” Shine replied in a voice that wouldn’t be argued with, she pulled the bundle of meat pieces from her back, “Take this and go,” she handed the bundle to the hunter, “if I catch you hanging around I’ll kick your butt myself, now go!”

Reluctantly, Lone-Hunter took hold of Shine’s bundle, turned and crossed the river to join One-Eye who already stood on the opposite bank. After waiting to give her two friends time to start up the slope towards the cave, Shine gripped her spear in both hands and moved back towards the woods. Sensing the Night-Walker in the trees, Shine paused behind the trunk of a big tree and rested her spear against one of the lower branches; it’d be no use to her in the coming fight. Instead of using her spear, she drew a long piece of sharpened wood, about the length of her thigh bone, from a loop on her belt.

Clutching the stake with its fire hardened point in her hand she moved quietly between the trees listening for any sound that the Night-Walker might make. Normally she could hear prey breathing from quite a way off, but, Night-Walkers didn’t need to breathe. To make matters worse this Night-Walker was brighter than most and was keeping as still as a rock. Muttering darkly under her breath, Shine paused in the deeper, darker shadow of another tree. Under the trees it was darker than when she closed her eyes to sleep, the only sound was the creaking of the trees as they stirred the air with their branches. If the Night-Walker was breathing she might smell its fetid breath, but it wasn’t so she couldn’t, there was only one thing for it, she hated hunting this way but needs must…

“Oh dear!” Shine cried in a loud voice, “I’m just a poor defenceless female lost in these deep, dark woods.” She paused and listened but heard nothing. “Oh well,” she whispered to herself, “Yes, lost in the woods with no one to protect me and all this hot, rich **blood** rushing through my young, soft and really snuggleable body!” Shine paused to listen, “Ah-ha,” she smiled as she spoke quietly to herself, she’d heard something start to move towards her, “something hungry this way comes!” 

Taking a firmer grip on her stake she closed her eyes and listened very, very carefully, yes there were wary almost silent footsteps coming towards her, she could hear them quite clearly now.

“Oh dear!” Shine called out loud, “How will I get home without some big, nasty, creature sinking its fangs into my poor, defenceless neck?”

The Night-Walker sprang from the shadows into a beam of moonlight that shone down between the trees. Colliding with Shine’s fist it stumbled backwards and hit a tree.

“HI!” Shine smiled brightly as the Night-Walker bounced off the tree and staggered towards her, “I’m Shine the Night-Walker Hunter and you’re…” Shine thrust her stake into the Night-Walker’s heart, she stood back as it turned to ash, “…dead!”

“Yay for me!” Shine did a little victory dance as she watched the ash settle onto the forest floor.

The Night-Walker must have been one of Blood-Fang and Dreamer’s people. They had a deep cave, where they hid from the sun, somewhere up at the head of the valley. They mostly stayed up there and didn’t bother Shine and her clan. The Night-Walkers usually fed on animals but sometimes they took a human and made it into on of their own. Normally they only did this when Blood-Fang got it into his head to try and kill Shine; so far he’d been amazingly unsuccessful.

Standing and listening for five hands of heart beats, Shine shrugged, slipped her stake back into its loop and headed off towards the river. Pausing only long enough to wash the worst of the dirt and blood from her arms, legs and face she trotted up the slope towards home. Sensing Moon-Wolf before she saw him she slowed as she walked around a bush that grew next to the path leading to the cave, Shine came face to face with the wolf. He was twice the size of a normal wolf and as clever as a man; in fact over the three nights when the moon was at its fullest he was a man. A Man-Wolf as Night-Watcher called him. Lifting a questioning eyebrow, Moon-Wolf asked the unspoken question.

“Yeah, we’re safe for the night,” Shine told him, “you can go back to Elm now, and thanks for looking after everyone.”

Making a sort of snuffling-grunt, as if to say, ‘you’re welcome’, Moon-Wolf trotted ahead of her towards the cave mouth. He was too big and strong to be worried about Night-Walkers and his teeth and jaws were powerful enough to rip one to ashes if it tried. Climbing the last few paces, Shine saw One-Eye, Lone-Hunter and Night-Watcher waiting for her at the cave mouth.

“Are you alright?” Night-Watcher stepped towards Shine and hugged her; as her mother’s mate he’d been her step-father since her real father had left the clan and the tribe some years ago.

“I’m fine,” Shine returned her step-father’s hug, “lone Night-Walker,” Shine paused her brow furrowed in thought, “y’know, Dad,” she grinned up into her step-father’s face, “we really need to think of a better name for Night-Walkers something more snappy, y’know?”

“I think I do,” Night-Watcher smiled at the young woman before him, “I’ll give it some thought, alright?”

“Now,” Shine looked at her friends and family, “I’m cold, wet and tired, I want my bed.”

“Of course,” Night-Watcher agreed as the little group split up to go to there own beds.

Walking around the fire that was kept burning at the cave mouth, Shine stepped over and around the bodies of her clan as they settled down to sleep. Eventually she came to where her sister, Dusk lay huddled up in their sleeping skins. Pulling off her hunting dress, Shine pulled back the skins and crawled under them next to her sister.

“You’re all cold and clammy and you smell really gross,” Dusk informed her sister in a sleepy voice.

“Sorry,” Shine apologised as she tried to get comfortable.

“Here,” Dusk turned over to face her sister, “snuggle up close I’ll soon get you warm.”

“Thanks,” Shine nuzzled her sister’s neck in gratitude as she felt herself getting warmer, “who’s gonna keep be warm when you mate with Lone-Hunter?”

“Oh stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Dusk ordered, “shut up and let me get back to sleep.”

Feeling safe and warm in her little sister’s arms, Shine quickly drifted off into a deep sleep where she dreamed about the events of the past day.

0=0=0=0

**A note about language.**

Most stories seem to depict ‘Cave-persons’ as having the language skills of a retarded three year old; does the phrase, ‘Boy smell nice’, sound familiar? I’m sorry, but I really feel that the planning of things like hunting large and dangerous game needs more language skills than the average toddler has. So, in this fic our characters will for the most part speak in colloquial English and only occasionally descend into what we might call ‘cave speak’.

Character List.  
Mother………………………Joyce.  
Night-Watcher………………Giles.  
Shine………………………...Buffy.  
Dusk……..…………………..Dawn.

One-Eye.......…………….......Xander.  
Chase………………………...Cordelia.

Moon-Wolf…………...……...Oz.  
Elm……..…………………….Willow.

Lone-Hunter…..………..….…Riley.

Dark……………………..……Faith.

Blood-Fang…………………...Spike.  
Dream…………………………Drusilla 

Blood-drinker…………………Vampire.  
Night-walker………………….Demon.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

**Dawn.**

Every year, without fail, just before the leaves started to change colour, Shine’s people would start to make their long trek south from the great grasslands of the north. No one, not even the great mammoths, stayed on the plains over the winter where the temperature dropped so low that it would kill a man in less than half a half-day.

The tribe, of which Shine’s clan was a part, moved south as the snow started to come down from the northern wastes. They would move slowly, crossing rivers and climbing to cross the high mountain passes before they were closed by the snows that came early to those high places. Once across the mountains the tribe would descend into the warmer lands where they would spend the winter. At the end of their long trek the tribe would camp where two rivers joined. Here they’d hunt for a few days before splitting up into their component family clans. Each clan would then move off separately to take up residence in the valleys that nestled between the mountains that protected them from the worst of the winter.

The valley that Shine’s clan lived in was a beautiful place. It had woods and meadows full of game and edible plants, roots and mushrooms. The river that ran the length of the valley seemed to teem with fish; you would have to be a particularly incompetent hunter or gatherer to starve in Shine’s valley. For shelter there were good caves in the cliff that over looked the river where it left the valley to make its way south across the rolling country until it disappeared to a place that none of Shine’s people had ever been.

Yet with all these advantages none of the tribe’s clans had been willing to spend a winter in this valley. Of course men hunted there and the women would venture a short way into the valley to gather food. But, everyone always made sure that they left the valley before nightfall. Anyone who got lost or who tried to stay the night was either never seen again or found dead the next day. The old stories told by the Mothers and storytellers around the camp fires at night spoke of hunters who’d stayed the night in the valley and had been found dead the next morning. Their bodies would quickly be buried, but one or two nights later the dead hunter would rise from his grave and try to eat his clan-mates. These undead were very difficult to kill, sometimes a lucky spear thrust would reduce the hunter to ash or someone would touch a burning branch to him and he’d burst into flame before turning to ash and drifting away on the night breeze.

This had all changed the winter that Shine had stopped being a girl and turned into a woman. After a day spent in the valley collecting roots and mushrooms with her mother and sister, Shine had got separated as she wandered between the trees picking mushrooms and eating pine seeds. By the time she’d realised what had happened it was already too dark to find her way to safety at the mouth of the valley. Sobbing with terror she’d hidden under a fallen tree where she’d eventually fallen into a restless sleep.

Awaking with a start, Shine found a man-creature with a hideously misshapen face standing over her. It laughed at the terrified young woman before grabbing her and pulling her from her hiding place. Terrified beyond words, Shine resolved to fight, she’d always been a brave, strong child and grabbing a loose branch from the base of the fallen tree she’d used it as a club and hit the man-creature over the head.

Of the two of them, Shine would never be sure who was the most surprised, herself or the man-creature. The man-creature literally flew across the clearing from the force of Shine’s blow and crashed to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. Shaking his head the man-creature slowly climbed back to his feet and attacked again. Not knowing what had happened, Shine had been staring in wonder at what she thought must be a magic club when the man-thing barrelled into her and knocked her off her feet.

Screaming in terror and distress even though she knew no one would hear her calls, Shine fought to keep the man-creature’s fangs from her throat. It was only after she and the man-creature had been struggling for some time that both of them realised something was very wrong. Surely, thought the man-creature, the girl should be dead by now and he ought to be drinking her hot, sweet blood; Shine, on the other hand, wondered why the man-creature hadn’t been able to kill her.

Taking advantage of the man-creature’s confusion, Shine easily pushed him off her. Once again the man-creature flew through the air to land with a loud thud several paces away. Jumping to her feet, Shine didn’t even consider running for her life. Instead she leapt on the man-creature and started to beat on him with her small fists. Although the man-creature was hurt it wasn’t killed and by the way it fought back it wasn’t anywhere near dying yet. At a loss at what to do next, Shine got off the man-creature and backed away letting the man-creature regain its feet. Casting around for a weapon, Shine saw nothing she could use, however she did notice that although it was very dark under the trees she didn’t have much difficulty picking things out, this puzzled her greatly. But not as greatly as to how she was going to save herself from the man-creature.

Luckily the man-creature made her decision for her, he turned and fled into the woods, he moved so fast that Shine had trouble keeping track of him and he quickly disappeared between the trees. Surprised at finding herself alive, Shine huddled under her tree truck again and waited for the dawn. 

Later she found out that the man-creature was really a Night-Walker called Blood-Fang who lived with his mate, Dreamer in the caves at the head of the valley. Many was the time that Shine wished she’d killed Blood-Fang that night, but she’d been little more than silly girl at the time, her head full of handsome hunters and babies. Only later, after Night-Watcher joined the tribe and came to live with her clan did Shine find out what she really faced.

0=0=0=0

The following morning when Shine walked back into her clan’s camp she was met with suspicion by the clan’s hunters and unbounded joy by her mother and little sister. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was the daughter of the clan’s Mother, Shine suspected that the hunters would have killed her then and there and she wouldn’t have blamed them. No one came out of the valley alive after spending the night there. Sitting around the camp fire, Shine told her story to her unbelieving clan-mates. At first no one believed her, everyone except her mother and sister had laughed at her saying how she’d not really been lost in the valley; she’d obviously got lost on her way home and slept the night in the woods, but not in the valley.

Glaring at her clan-mates, Shine felt her anger grow and grow in her chest, how dare they laugh at her? She was the daughter of the clan’s Mother and she’d be Mother too one day. But now they were laughing at her saying she was just a silly girl who’d got lost and had a bad dream. Jumping to her feet, Shine had snarled at Looks-Far the lead hunter of her clan who’d been loudest in laughing at her story. Not really knowing what she was doing, Shine sprang across the fire and landed on Looks-Far knocking him onto his back. At first Looks-Far had continued to laugh, but when Shine easily lifted him to his feet before knocking him down again, he stopped laughing.

After the fight that wasn’t really a fight because Looks-Far had never managed to hit Shine once while she seemed to be able to hit him whenever she wanted, a meeting of the tribe’s Mothers was called. As a woman Shine could only be judged by the Mothers of the tribe and judged she would be because no woman had ever attacked and beaten a hunter like that before. Something special and unusual had happened and the Mothers needed to find out what it was. They questioned Shine’s story over and over again, but Shine never changed any of her words always telling the tale the same way. Next the Mothers had tested her, having her lift heavy things and throw rocks and spears. When they were satisfied that Shine had told them and showed them everything they went off to discuss what was to be done. They left Shine with her mother to wait fearfully for their decision.

It was nearly evening when the Mothers returned with their judgement. A very old Mother called Wise came and sat in front of Shine and her mother. Wise had come from a tribe who lived far towards the sun rise when she was little older than Shine was now. Her tribe had different stories to Shine’s tribe and one of those stories had told of a girl hunter who was faster, stronger and better than any hunter in her tribe. This girl had protected her tribe from the night-monsters that had plagued the area where her tribe had lived and had eventually been killed protecting her people. But she had won the battle and her tribe had been able to live in peace and safety from that point onwards. It was Wise’s opinion that Shine was a girl like the girl from her tribe and she’d been sent by the spirits of the dead Mothers to protect her tribe and make the valley safe for her people. It was also decided that a new clan would be formed to live in the valley while Shine hunted the monsters that lived there.

This had been four winters ago now and every year Shine’s clan moved into their valley and every year Shine would hunt and kill the un-natural things that lived there and every year one of the monsters, the ‘big-bad’ as Dusk had called them would be more formidable than the Big-Bad of the previous winter. But on the plus side every year Shine got stronger and wiser in the ways of the monsters and had always been able to defeat the new Big-Bad; Shine saw no reason why this shouldn’t go on until she’d killed the last Big-Bad and the valley was safe for everyone.

0=0=0=0

Opening an eye, Elm looked out at the dawning of a new day from under her sleeping skins and groaned. She didn’t want to get up, it was cold outside and she was nice and warm with her mate, Moon-Wolf next to her. Trying to ignore the day, Elm buried herself deeper into Moon-Wolf’s fur, she felt him start to stir and nudge her with his cold wet nose.

“Do we have to get up?” Elm asked as she rolled over to look hopefully into her mates amber eyes.

As usual Moon-Wolf said nothing but seemed to be able to express an entire argument with just a look or a raised eyebrow. This morning he managed to convince his mate of the necessity of getting up by simply yawning widely and then licking her on the end of her nose with his long pink tongue.

“EW!” Elm squealed as she wiped wolf spit from her nose, “Alright already, I’ll get up!”

Moon-Wolf opened his mouth in a silent wolf chuckle as Elm searched around for her dress, it was too cold to be sitting around naked; it wouldn’t be long before the first snows fell in the valley. Pulling her dress on over her head, Elm looked down to where her son slept curled up by her feet. Frowning, Elm reached over and shook the boy awake, she frowned because when she’d gone to sleep last night Cub had been lying next to her. He must have got up in the night and wandered around a little just like his father sometimes did. Elm hoped that he wouldn’t wander far; she knew that if the wolves found him they’d not harm him. It was part of the agreement that the clan had with the wolves that any young found wandering alone were not to be harmed but returned to their clan. So far the agreement had held on both sides.

“Come on sleepy head,” Elm shook her son to prevent him from curling into a tighter ball and going back to sleep, “Food!”

Offering him her breast, Cub responded by coming and sitting in his mother’s lap and sucking at her nipple. Although he was three winters old and had been eating solids for some time, Cub still suckled from his mother when she offered. Stroking her son’s head Elm frowned again, Cub was hairier than a small boy should be at that age. His teeth were sharper and his fangs more pronounced too and if his eyes shone amber in the firelight or his ears were pointier than normal, that didn’t make him bad. He was her little boy, but she did worry that he’d grow up to be like his father. However, Night-Watcher, who seemed to know about these things didn’t appear unduly worried by the boy and the way Shine played with him reassured Elm that no one was planning on killing her child for fear of what he might grow into.

“Come on greedy guts,” Elm pulled Cub away from her breast; he let go reluctantly and growled softly at his mother. “Don’t you talk to your mother like that, young man,” Elm warned as she climbed to her feet. “Let’s go stinky-boy, time to get you cleaned up.”

Cub whined piteously as his mother dragged him towards the cave mouth.

0=0=0=0

Once actually in the river that ran below the cave, Cub seemed to forget his earlier reluctance and happily splashed about in the cold water. Sitting on the river bank, Elm scrubbed at her teeth with a frayed twig. Keeping your teeth clean kept them strong and strong teeth let you eat properly. Glancing up at the sound of footsteps, Elm saw Dusk helping Chase to sit down on the back next to her.

“Hi guys!” Elm called happily around her tooth-twig.

“Hi Elm,” Dusk replied as she slipped her feet into the water and wiggled her toes about.

“Hi,” Chase looked sick.

“What’s up Chase?” Elm moved so she could sit next to the heavily pregnant young woman, she put her hand on Chase’s belly. “Hmm,” Elm said knowingly as a clan Wise-woman should, she felt Chase’s child move under her hand, “I wouldn’t move too far from home if I were you, feels like your little visitor will be moving out soon.”

“Oh thank the Great Mother for that!” Chase gave a sigh of relief, “I thought I was going to be stuck like this forever. I mean look at what it’s doing to my figure.”

Elm and Dusk did indeed look and yes Chase did look bloated and her breasts had grown huge with big, dark brown nipples; she was in fact an almost perfect copy of the Great Mother herself. Before mating with One-Eye, Chase had always been a trim athletic looking girl hence the name Chase. Many a young hunter had tried to catch her but only One-Eye had managed it.

“You do know men don’t notice that sort of thing?” Elm explained to Chase’s unbelieving face, “The Great Mother blinds them to how you really are and they only see you as you were when they first snuggled you.”

“Unless a younger, snugglier girl comes along and they suddenly see you for real,” Dusk said bitterly; her real father had deserted her mother for a younger woman from a nearby tribe.

Elm gave Dusk a hard look, this was not what Chase needed to hear right now, she needed to hear that she was still pretty and desirable and not the fat blob she really was at the moment.

“Anyway,” Elm continued wondering if she really believed what she was saying, “as soon as you give birth and start feeding the fat will just fall off you…”

“You’re saying I’m fat?” Chase snapped.

“NO!” Elm cried defensively, “Not as such…erm…” Elm looked to Dusk for help.

“Don’t look at me,” Dusk grinned back at her friend, “you’re the one who said she was fat not me.” Dusk cast Chase a serious look, “I never said you were fat that was all Elm’s idea.”

“Look,” Elm continued forcefully as she tried to reassert her tattered authority, “Yes, Chase you are fat,” Elm held up her hand to forestall anything Chase might say, “but being fat is good especially with winter and a baby on the way and I’m sure One-Eye would love you whatever you look like.”

“Now you’re saying I’m ugly!” Chase burst into tears and buried her face in her hands.

“Nooo!” Elm cried as she glared at a sniggering Dusk, “Look,” Elm took a deep breath, she’d not mentioned this to anyone yet, “If it makes you feel any better I’ve got a baby inside me too.”

“You have?” Dusk looked up from where she was playing with Cub.

“I think so,” Elm replied.

“I’m not surprised,” Dusk tickled the struggling boy as they played on the river bank, “all that snarling and growling and whining coming from under your sleeping skins at night…” Dusk grinned mischievously, “…I’m surprised Moon-Wolf can stand all the noise you make!”

The comment made Chase forget how fat she was and made her laugh, “So what do you want?” she asked, “Boy? Girl? Puppy?”

“Fine friends you two are,” Elm sulked, “you do know I can put a spell on you, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Dusk giggled, “your last spell was very tasty…herb and bird soup!”

“Not my fault it didn’t work out,” Elm sulked; a lot of her potions turned to soup, but on the plus side the clan seemed to enjoy eating the results of her failed experiments.

Sitting on the river bank, Dusk continued to play with Cub, looking after Elm’s little boy was good practice for when she had her own children. Cub nipped her finger with his sharp teeth so Dusk smacked him like his mother had told her to do; he needed to be broken of his habit of biting people before he got any bigger. Instead of whining or crying, Cub ignored the sharp pain of the smack and looked off into the trees on the other side of the river. He stared very intently between the trees and started to whimper before burying his face between Dusk’s breasts.

“Hey guys,” Dusk said quietly, “something’s wrong.”

“Where?” Suddenly Elm became very alert.

“Across the river,” Dusk pointed as she passed Cub back to Elm.

“Lions?” Chase asked; her friends where starting to frighten her, if there were something bad she wouldn’t be able to run very fast.

“No,” Elm shook her head, “they always drink further upstream and anyway they live much further up the valley.”

“Don’t care, frightened,” Dusk started to stand up as Elm helped Chase to her feet, “Let’s go home…”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than three shambling, hairy man-like figures burst from the trees on the other side of the river. Their faces were animalistic and they clutched primitive clubs in their large, black nailed hands as they lurched deceptively quickly towards the river bank. All three women gave high-pitched distress screams as the beast-men stopped and made threat displays on the other side of the river.

Making the loudest, most piercing scream of all, Dusk bent to snatch up several smooth stones from the river bank. She threw them at the beast-men as they jumped up and down and uttered vicious sounding whoops from the opposite bank. Holding tightly on to Cub, Elm pushed Chase towards the path that led to safety and home. The men and Shine would soon be there having heard Dusk’s loud calls for help and the closer they got to the cave the quicker help would come.

One of the beast-men, being bolder than the others, splashed into the water. Picking up more stones, Dusk threw one which hit the leading beast-men right on the forehead. The stone made a hollow sounding crack as it hit the creature; it collapsed to its knees and then fell on its face into the water. For a moment this seemed to make the other two beast-men hesitate allowing Dusk to throw more stones at them, unfortunately this time she scored no hits. Getting over their fear of the flying stones, the two remaining beast-men waved their clubs above their heads. They started to whoop even more loudly as they splashed across the river. Giving an extra loud scream, Dusk threw her last stone, turned around and started to run.

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	3. Chapter 3

3.

**The Battle.**

“So, dear,” Mother asked as Shine helped her fold up the sleeping skins, “what are you going to do today?”

“Me and Lone-Hunter are going out to where we killed that buck yesterday,” Shine paused as she put down one skin and picked up another, “we left some of the meat we couldn’t carry hidden up in a tree.” The two women shook bits of nuts and leaves out of the folds of the skin.

“I do wish you and Dusk wouldn’t eat in bed,” Mother told her eldest daughter, “you were saying?”

“It wasn’t me, Mom,” Shine whined, “it’s Dusk…” 

Shine’s mother gave her one of those ‘mom’ looks that women thousands of years in the future would still be using when they didn’t really believe what their children were telling them.

“…yeah, right, anyway,” Shine got back on track, “we tied the spare meat to the upper branches of this tree. We want to see if its still there and bring it back.”

“Well, do be careful,” Mother placed the neatly folded skin on the pile with the others, “weren’t you telling me there’s lions about?”

“Yeah,” Shine looked around, there were no more skins to fold up, “I’ve been thinking about that,” She sat on the pile of skins and looked up at her mother, “maybe if Elm talked to the Wolves we could join together and hunt and kill the lions.”

“Hmm,” Mother pursed her lips and thought about this radical idea for a moment, “I think that needs to be thought about by the entire clan. After all lions have their place in the world too…” Mother looked at Shine and gave her a frown, her daughter didn’t appear to be listening to her, “…what’s wrong?”

“Don’t know…” Shine was looking at Moon-Wolf who’d suddenly sat up and seemed to be listening intently to something, “…what’s…?”

The sound of her sister’s scream came to Shine’s ears a fraction of a moment after Moon-Wolf had jumped up and run out of the cave like a big grey blur.

“Trouble!” Shine shouted to Night-Watcher and Lone-Hunter as they stood just inside the cave talking; Shine turned to her mother and started to push her to the back of the cave, “Back of the cave, now! Hide!”

Turning again, Shine snatched up her spear and headed for the cave mouth, just as the sound of shouting and whooping reached her ears.

“Beast-men!” Lone-Hunter cried as he picked up a heavy, long handled axe.

“The women!” Night-Watcher’s eyes grew round with fright at he realised most of the clan’s women weren’t in or near the cave.

Looking around, Shine saw that Dusk, Elm and Chase were indeed missing, that must be where Moon-Wolf had gone in such a hurry.

“Fight now!” Shine ordered as she pushed past the men-folk to stand at bay, spear in hand, outside the cave.

Looking down the slope towards the river, Shine saw what looked like a dark, hairy wave surging up the slope towards the cave. The beast-men whooped and called to each other as they waved their clubs and primitive spears in the air.

“AYE! AYE! HAAAA!” Shine screamed as she ran at the advancing creatures her spear thrust out in front of her.

Seeing the blonde girl charging at them clutching a spear that looked far too big and heavy for her, the beast-men hesitated for half a moment. They’d never experienced anything quite like this and anything new or unexpected tended to frighten or unsettle them for a short period. Roaring his tribe-mates onwards the leader of the beast-men got his hunters moving again. But their hesitation had made them lose momentum so that when Shine crashed into the hairy, rank mass of creatures, she stopped the entire attack cold in its tracks.

Screaming with incoherent rage, Shine thrust her spear into the belly of a big beast-man who appeared to be using half the thigh bone of a mammoth as a club. Her victim screamed like a little girl as Shine’s razor sharp, flint spearhead ripped open his stomach and his guts fell out onto the ground. Withdrawing her spear, Shine brought the butt of her weapon around and hit a beast-man across the side of his head. Hearing bone break under the force of her blow, Shine smiled as blood and teeth sprayed from the beast-man’s mouth.

By now, Lone-Hunter had joined her and was attacking the beast-men with his axe in one hand and a wide bladed knife in his other. Behind Lone-Hunter, Night-Watcher held his Magic-Stick and shook it angrily at the beast-men. He might be old and not as good at fighting spear to spear as he used to be, but he was skilled with other weapons and knew how best to use them.

Whirling her spear around in front of her, Shine knocked a clumsy spear thrust at her chest aside. Reversing her spear she was just about to smash in the face of her attacker when a fast moving stone hit the beast-man on the head and cracked his skull open. The creature looked at Shine in surprise before raising his hand to his head and collapsing on the ground. Snarling and growling like Moon-Wolf, Shine moved on to her next victim without pause. How dare these things come into _her_ valley and attack _her_ clan; with a swipe of her spear she laid open the throat of a beast-man before it could bring its club around to defend itself. Pausing for a moment to take a breath, Shine smiled; this was a good spear, One-Eye had made it especially for her she would thank him again when the battle was over. This thought made her frown, where was One-Eye?

0=0=0=0

Running from behind a bush, One-Eye paused as he saw Shine and Lone-Hunter battle the beast-men. He’d been just around the bend in the cliff relieving himself and hadn’t heard the battle begin. But now he had and he could see what was going on, but he didn’t know what he should do. The only weapon he had with him was his knife; he wouldn’t be able to help much with that. Casting around for something he could use as a club or spear he saw nothing. None of the brushes around here were big enough to make clubs or spears from. There were lots of pieces of stone lying around but he’d never been that good at throwing.

Almost crying with frustration at not being able to do anything to help, One-Eye happened to notice Night-Watcher using his throwing stick. A thought came to One-Eye’s quick and clever mind. If you could have a throwing stick for spears, why not stones? Looking around at the bushes he saw what he needed, using his knife he cut a longish branch and quickly cut off most of the leaves. Working as fast as he could he made something like the two-pronged spears the clan used for fishing. Wedging a stone in the fork of the prongs he drew back his arm like he was using a throwing stick and brought it violently forward.

Standing on the slope he watched wide-eyed as the stone sailed through the air and hit a beast-man on the head making a sound like a hollow tree truck did when you hit it with a stick. The beast-man fell to the ground blood oozing from the wound in his head as One-Eye jumped up and down and cheered his own cleverness. Remembering where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, he calmed down before picking up another stone and sending it harder and faster than he could ever have throw it at the beast-men.

0=0=0=0

Saving her breath for fighting, Dusk beat frantically with the stick she’d found at the beast-man. The foul creature had flung itself at her and managed to grab hold of her ankle and tripped her. Now on the ground the beast-man was climbing up her body as she beat at it ineffectually with her inadequate weapon. Further up the slope, Elm waved her most powerful talisman and used her most terrible curses on the other beast-men as she threw stones at it in an attempt to stop it eating Cub, Chase and herself. Her threat display was so effective she appeared to have confused the simple minded beast-man and it was keeping its distance. However, Elm couldn’t help Dusk, if she tried the beast would be able to attack and kill Cub and Chase.

The beast-man’s clumsy, horny hands were up to her waist now, and Dusk was beginning to think that she’d never get to mate with Lone-Hunter and she really wanted to do that! Lone-Hunter would be a good mate who’d give her lots of babies and she desperately wanted babies. The more babies she had the better standing she’d have in the tribe and she wanted to be Mother of All one day. But this horrible beast seemed determined to thwart her plans as it pawed at her body and pulled at her dress. She also knew that eating you wasn’t the worst thing beast-men did to pretty girls like her.

Screaming with a mixture of anger, fear and frustration, Dusk found a stone under her hand. Just as she looked up into the beast’s bloodshot eyes and smelt its foul breath on her face, she raised the stone to try and dash out its brains. But, before she could bring her stone down to smash out the horrid creature’s brains a grey blur moved in from her left. Suddenly, Dusk felt the weight of the beast-man being lifted off her, she saw big, powerful jaws and long sharp teeth clamp around the beast-man’s neck.

There was a crunch of breaking bone as Moon-Wolf closed his jaws around the beast-man’s throat. Blood oozed into his mouth and over the fur as he shook the life out of the creature. Forcing himself not to lose himself in the joy of the kill, Moon-Wolf dropped his prey and turned snarling and growling at the remaining creature who’d been menacing his mate and cub. The beast-man wailed in fear at the sight of the huge wolf with blood dripping from all around its jaws and on its teeth. Dropping his weapon he tried to run, but Moon-Wolf leaped after him; landing with his forepaws on the beast’s back, Moon-Wolf pulled him to the ground before tearing him apart. 

Jumping to her feet, Dusk kicked the lifeless body of her attacker.

“DEAD!” she shouted happily. “You’re dead and I’m not, DEAD!” This time she stamped on the beast’s genitals as she performed a victory dance around the corpse of her foe, “I hope no one mourns you and you get eaten by birds!” Dusk sang as she danced around the body, “Nah-nah-nee-nah-nah!” Once more she kicked the lifeless body of the beast-man before hitching up the front of her skirt and urinating on the corpse. With a final satisfied, “HUH!” she spat at the dead creature before turning to see if her friends were alright.

Running over to a sobbing Chase, Dusk knelt down next to her she hugged her and started to croon to her making comforting sounds. While this was going on Moon-Wolf was making a big fuss of Elm and Cub, whining and snuffling as he wagged his tail and licked their faces. Looking back up slope, Dusk frowned with worry as she stroked Chase’s hair; they may have won here but it would all be for nothing if the beast-men had killed the rest of the clan.

0=0=0=0

Jeering at the backs of the few retreating beast-men, Shine shook her breasts at them while Lone-Hunter waved his genitals in their general direction.

“Really children,” Night-Watcher came to stand next to them his magic-stick still held loosely in his hand; he gave them a disapproving look while making a magic gesture with the first two fingers of his hand at the retreating beast-men.

“Night-Watcher,” Shine rearranged her dress to cover her breasts again, “what’s that,” she copied the gesture that the old man had made, “supposed to mean.”

“It’s a gesture of disdain for a defeated enemy used by my people,” Night-Watcher explained.

“You’re a very strange man, Night-Watcher, y’know that don’t you?” Shine leaned towards her step-father and looked him in the eye before adding, “I put it all down to your foreign upbringing.”

“Night-Watcher’s strangeness aside, look!” Lone-Hunter pointed towards the cave where a lot of light grey smoke swirled around the entrance.

“MOM!” Shine cried and sprinted up the slope to the cave mouth.

Sliding to a halt at the entrance to the cave, Shine dragged the dead beast-man from where he’d fallen across the fire and reduced it to a few smoking embers. Not worrying about the fire for now, she moved further into the cave.

“MOM!?” She cried desperately, “Mom are you okay?”

“I’m fine honey,” Mother appeared out of the darkness at the back of the cave, “but it is a little smoky in here.”

“Come-on outside,” Shine put her arm around her mother and lead her into the daylight, “What happened?”

“Oh,” Mother groaned softly as she eased herself down onto a sitting stone, “one of those things,” she gestured at the dead beast-man, “must have got around you. It came up to see if I was good to eat,” Mother smiled at her daughter, “I wasn’t. I hit it with an axe.”

“Oh well done Mom!” Shine hugged her mother before asking, “Is the baby alright?”

Placing her hand on her stomach, Mother felt the unborn child kick, she smiled and nodded.

“He’s fine,” Mother said just as the rest of the clan arrived back at the cave.

For the next few moments there was a lot of hugging and relieved crying as the clan strengthened the bonds that held them together. Something like the attack of the beast-men could either destroy or strengthen a clan; Shine was glad to see it had strengthened her clan. Even Chase had stopped crying as One-Eye showed off his latest creation before Lone-Hunter and Shine boasted about how many enemies they’d killed.

But after the group hugging and boasting was over, Shine found herself alone by the dead fire. Everyone but her, or so it seemed, had someone to snuggle with. There was Mother and Night-Watcher, Moon-Wolf, Elm and Cub, One-Eye and Chase, even Dusk had deserted her for Lone-Hunter. Finding herself feeling very sad and lonely Shine realised that this was what her life would be like from now on. When Dusk mated with Lone-Hunter at mid-winter there’d be no one for her to snuggle with and keep her warm anymore. Dusk would be snuggling with Lone-Hunter and getting babies off him. Wiping at the tear that ran down her blood and dust stained cheek, Shine knew she’d never have a mate to snuggle with and get babies off. How could she? She was a hunter and two hunters couldn’t snuggle and make babies; that would be silly and was probably against the laws of the tribe.

Resigned to her fate as living mate-less and childless for the rest of her life, Shine got to her feet and walked out into the sunlight. Looking down the slope at all the beast-man bodies that lay there, she sighed heavily and realised that something needed to be done about the corpses. If they left the bodies there for too long not only would they start to stink they’d also attract scavengers. Worse they’d attract the lions. Once again, Shine thought they really needed to do something about the lions.

Walking over to the first body, Shine noticed that it was still alive, bending down she took its head in her hands, twisting it sharply she broke its neck. Dusting off her hands she stood up again, in the time it had taken to kill the beast-man a solution had come to her mind. What she’d do and what everyone else could do, when they finally finished snuggling in the cave, was drag the bodies down by the river. It would make a fine gift for the wolves and forest spirits who always appreciated any spare meat that was lying around.

The clan couldn’t eat the beast-men because they were too much like proper men and eating men was against the tribe's customs. The tribe defined ‘men’ as anything that cooked meat over a fire and that’s what beast-men did; hard to believe but true. So although the beast-men wouldn’t hesitate to eat one of the clan, no one in the clan would eat a beast-man; which Shine thought was totally unfair. She’d already dragged two bodies down to the river by the time, Lone-Hunter, One-Eye and Moon-Wolf came to help her. Together they moved the last of the bodies and stood back while Elm called and talked to the wolf pack’s lead male and female.

“I wonder why they attacked us?” Shine wanted to know as she watched the wolves and Elm chatting.

“Probably just wanted to eat us,” suggested Lone-Hunter.

“I bet they wanted our weapons too,” One-Eye added; beast-man weapons weren’t very good and they preferred to steal them off proper people.

“Neat thing with the stone thrower,” Shine congratulated him once more, “We’re real lucky to have you One-Eye.”

“Yeah,” Lone-Hunter turned and slapped One-Eye on the back making him stagger a little, Lone-Hunter held out his hand, “I’m proud to call you brother.”

“Gee thanks,” One-Eye clasped Lone-Hunter’s forearm and found himself pulled into a bear hug by the big hunter.

“That’s nice,” Shine said sarcastically, “when you’ve finished with all the ‘male bonding’ stuff we still have that meat to collect and get home…oh and here comes Elm.”

“Hi,” Elm eyed Lone-Hunter and One-Eye warily as they stood with their arms around each others shoulders; she glanced at Shine, “What’s up with those two?”

“They’ve decided they’re brothers,” Shine explained.

“Oooh, that’s nice,” Elm smiled and went all soft and silly for a moment; only Shine seemed to be unaffected by all the ‘love’ in the group.

“So?” Shine broke the spell and everyone regained their senses, “Elm, what did our friends the wolves have to say.”

“Oh, yeah,” Elm said rather breathlessly, “they said thank-you for the meat and yes they agree that something must be done about the lions.” Elm paused and looked around to make sure no one was listening that shouldn’t be. “Between you and me,” she added conspiratorially, “I get the feeling that the lions carried off a couple of cubs. Great-Fang wouldn’t admit it but they seem pretty angry about something.”

“Okay,” Shine nodded her head, “we’ll deal with lions later. In the mean time we better go after that meat.”

“Yeah,” Lone-Hunter agreed, “we’ll collect weapons and get right on that.”

The little party turned and started heading on back to the cave. The attack by the beast-men had made them lose a half day in their preparations for winter. The extra meat from the buck they’d killed, if it was still safe, would help. But, something like this might mean that either Mother’s or Chase’s baby would die.

0=0=0=0

Walking up to the cave mouth, Shine started to get worried as she saw Night-Watcher rubbing two sticks together as he sat next to the dead fire; Mother didn’t look too happy either and Chase looked positively upset.

“What’s wrong?” Shine asked.

“We’re all going to die!” Wailed Chase as she dabbed at her tear stained face with a piece of fur.

“Oh I’m sure it not as bad as that,” Mother tried to comfort Chase.

“Not as bad?” Chase’s voice got louder and higher as she spoke, “What could possibly be worse?”

“We could be eaten alive by lions?” Suggested Dusk from where she was looking over Night-Watcher’s shoulder.

“Oh, yeah,” Chase thought about this for a moment, “yeah,” she agreed, “that would be almost as bad, but you’ve got to admit this is pretty terrible.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dusk nodded, “this is bad, but not as horrific as being eaten alive by lions.”

“Good,” Shine stood with her hands on her hips, “I’m glad that’s been sorted out, now will someone tell me what’s so bad and why haven’t we got the fire lit?”

There was a long pregnant silence as everyone who’d been waiting at the camp didn’t meet anyone else’s gaze.

“Well?” Shine started to tap her foot as she felt her temper start to slip away, “I’m waiting.”

“Erm…” it was Night-Watcher who broke the silence, “…well, there’s no easy way of saying this but…but does anyone remember how to start a fire, from scratch I mean?”

0=0=0=0


	4. Chapter 4

4.

**The Quest Begins.**

“Huh?” Shine grunted in bewilderment, what a silly question to ask.

“Don’t look at me,” Lone-Hunter shrugged, “in my birth-tribe that was women’s magic…”

“Yes, indeed,” Night-Watcher agreed, “in my tribe we had an official Firestarter…”

“A twisted Firestarter?” Shine asked for no good reason other than it sounded like the right thing to say.

“No,” Night-Watcher shook his head, “she was a rather fine, upstanding, young woman, as I recall.”

Everyone next turned to look at One-Eye, he was clever he’d be bound to know what to do.

“Don’t look at me,” One-Eye shrugged, “I don’t know, my mom always used to do it at home.”

“Couldn’t you create some sort of little twig thing that you could rub on a stone and it would burst into flame?” Dusk asked; no one knew if she was being serious or not as she was often prone to flights of fancy.

“Don’t be silly dear,” Mother turned to her youngest daughter, “that’s just a tale from a storyteller. One of those future tales they like to tell…”

“Yeah okay,” Shine felt she needed to keep everybody’s minds on the subject, “in the future they might be able to make fire just like that,” she snapped her fingers to illustrate her point, it gave her an idea and she looked hopefully at Elm, “Elm can you…?”

“No! No-way,” Elm laughed nervously, “that’s major mojo, way above my level. Talking to animals and such that’s me. Making fire? That’s like totally messing with primal forces and who knows where that might lead…yeah, well, I’ll tell you where it leads! It’ll lead to my hair and eyes turning black and the destruction of everything we know and understand…personally I’d rather be eaten by lions!”

Moon-Wolf whined his agreement with his mate.

“So,” Shine looked at her clan one by one, “you’re trying to tell me that _no one_ knows how to totally make fire?”

0=0=0=0

The following night was such a cold and miserable night which Shine spent curled up in her sleeping skins, by herself. On the other side of the cave she could hear her sister’s moans of pleasure and Lone-Hunter’s grunts as they snuggled furiously time and time again. Feeling very sorry for herself, Shine curled into a tighter ball as she tried to keep herself warm and block out the sounds that her sister and Lone-Hunter were making. Sighing to herself, Shine reflected that she’d not even had a farewell snuggle with her sister like she would have if Dusk and Lone-Hunter had waited to mate until mid-winter. But it had been decided that Shine, Lone-Hunter and One-Eye would leave the valley come the morning to search for and bring back some fire.

Not only did Shine miss her sister, she was also convinced that the task set by Mother was impossible. How was she and her friends supposed to carry fire back to the clan? She could track and kill almost any monster or animal, but how was she supposed to track and capture fire? Even if she did the chances were it would be pointless. Already it was cold enough at night to see people’s breath which meant that very soon the first snows would fall and without a fire everyone would freeze and die.

Slowly the sound of Dusk’s and Lone-Hunter’s urgent snuggling faded into the background as Shine fell into a fitful, dream-laden sleep. Dreaming she saw herself crossing great expanses of desolate land where she was confronted by all kinds of strange and dangerous creatures. After one particularly fearful encounter, that made her cry out in her sleep, she met a shadowy dark haired girl who beckoned her on to…

With a cry of alarm, Shine woke up. The dark haired girl and the terrible monsters vanished from her mind as she looked around the cold cave. The clan was stirring as they woke; Shine pulled on her hunting dress and wrapped a deer skin cloak around her shoulders. It hadn’t all been a dream; there really was no fire in the hearth and she and her friends must set out on their impossible mission today. After a cold meal of dried meat, Shine, Lone-Hunter and One-Eye said their tearful goodbyes to the clan that, Shine at least was convinced she’d never see again. Picking up their weapons they made their way down the slope towards the river.

“Follow the river?” Shine asked Lone-Hunter who was an even better tracker than she was and she was really good.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Lone-Hunter replied; he looked at One-Eye to see if he had a better idea.

“Why not?” One-Eye shrugged convinced that he’d never see Chase or his unborn child again, “Only people have fire and people live near water so…”

“Hey guys,” Shine looked at her fellow hunters, she was fearful of the words she was about to say but she said them anyway. “We could always disobey Mother and go to one of the other clans and get them to give us a little of their fire.”

“Disobey Mother!?” Lone-Hunter looked shocked at the very idea; alright you could disobey Mother sometimes like snuggling with a girl before completing the mating rituals, but mating rituals were just an excuse to have a party so they didn’t really matter and anyway Mother liked babies.

“How could you have such ideas?” One-Eye looked at the girl he’d so wanted to snuggle and mate with before she’d changed and before he’d met Chase, “Disobey Mother and she’s your mother too!”

“Okay, okay,” Shine sighed defeated, “it was just an idea.”

“And then there’s the shame of asking for fire,” Lone-Hunter pointed out.

“And what if they won’t give us any of their fire,” One-Eye added, “what if they need all their fire and have none to spare, did you think about that?”

Looking from one hunter to the other, Shine shrugged her shoulders, “You really have turned into brothers haven’t you?”

“Huh?” One-Eye and Lone-Hunter replied together.

“I think I’ve proved my point,” Shine sighed to herself then more loudly she said, “Come-on guys, daylights a-wasting, fire to find.”

0=0=0=0

Following the river down stream the three hunters found the woods that they knew turning into a forest. Here the trees were bigger and older than any they’d ever seen and they were alive with the strange calls of obviously fearsome animals. Halting at the sound of one particularly terrible call the three hunters looked at each other nervously.

“What was that!?” One-Eye asked.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Shine replied with false bravado and a little more loudly than she really needed to, “whatever it is, I’LL KILL IT IF IT ATTACKS US!”

The strange cries stopped at the sound of Shine’s shouted warning and the forest went quiet. However, that night they found a good solid looking tree and spent the night in the safety of its branches.

0=0=0=0

The next day they came out of the forest and found themselves on a wide undulating plain. Here the air was warmer and full of birdsong and the smell of animals. In the distance they could see herds of small deer and their tummies grumbled at their lack of meat. But the animals were too far away, so they’d never be able to catch them. Also there was no cover to help them sneak up on the fleet footed deer; obviously if people lived on this plain they had different ways of hunting to the clan. On the grasslands in the north where they hunted in the summer months the herds there weren’t as fast on their feet as these deer and were much easier to hunt and kill. Sighing sadly the three hunters continued on their journey, luckily they found some bird’s eggs, berries and nuts and ate those instead. This filled them up a little but it also made them miss roast deer all the more. At around midday, Shine sensed they were being followed; holding up her hand she signalled her friends to halt.

“What’s wrong?” Lone-Hunter asked as he knelt beside Shine as she watched their back trail. 

“Something’s after us,” Shine told him before sniffing the air, “Lions!”

“LIONS!” One-Eye cried loudly.

“SSSSH!” Chorused Shine and Lone-Hunter but it was too late the lions had heard and they were coming after them.

“AAAAGH!” The three hunters cried as they jumped to their collective feet and started to run.

Of all the creatures in the world, at least all the ones that Shine had come teeth to spear with, lions were the only ones that really frightened her. Lions were big with really big jaws and big teeth and they had big, sharp claws and had she mentioned they were really **BIG**!?

Glancing over her shoulder as she ran, Shine saw the lion’s white and grey mottled coats bounding along behind them. Lions could only run really fast for short distances and Shine had spotted them before they’d got into pouncing range. A man, or indeed a girl could run as fast as a lion, it was then just a matter of who could run the furthest fastest. Sometimes the person could out run the lions, sometimes they couldn’t.

“THERE!” Shine pointed ahead, not two-hands-of-one-hand of strides away stood a lone tree, the only tree on this part of the plain.

The three hunters ran for the tree as if their lives depended on it, which in fact they did. Getting near the tree, Shine lengthened her stride and jumped upwards, her momentum allowing her to catch hold of one of the lower branches. Scrambling into the tree she lay along the branch and held out her arm.

“Here!” Shine called down to her friends, “Take my hand!”

Pushing One-Eye towards Shine’s outstretched hand, Lone-Hunter turned clutching his spear ready to fight off the lions if needs be. Taking One-Eye’s hand in her own, Shine easily pulled him up into the tree.

“Up! Up!” Shine ordered him and held out her hand for Lone-Hunter; the man hesitated as he looked at short girl’s outstretched arm. “Don’t get all macho on me now,” Shine snapped, “you’ve got to live and look after my sister so take my hand and don’t get eaten!”

Seeing the sense in Shine’s argument, Lone-Hunter grabbed her hand and was pulled up into the tree. Once all of them were safely in the branches they climbed higher just as the lions appeared beneath them. Crying out in fear the hunters climbed even higher as the lions roared and tried to climb up the tree trunk behind them. Fortunately the lions couldn’t get a proper grip on the tree; big lions like these two weren’t very good tree climbers, for the time being the hunters were safe.

“You know,” Shine looked down at the hungry lions who were looking up at them licking their lips in anticipation of their meal, “if we survive this and manage to get some fire home.” Shine paused as she threw sticks at the lions (they’d all dropped their spears as they’d climbed) the lions snarled at this nuisance, “We get together with the wolves and kill those lions in the valley, no more messing about just talking about it.”

By themselves neither the wolves nor the humans were strong enough to kill the lions that spoilt the peace of the valley; together they’d be strong enough. Now Elm had agreed with Great-Fang that something needed to be done, a hunt could be organised. Perhaps, thought Shine, if hunting the lions was successful the wolves could be persuaded to hunt other things with the clan. Wolves were clever but they weren’t as clever as people so maybe if they joined the cleverness of people to the numbers and strength of wolves no one need go hungry during the cold winter months anymore.

But, this didn’t solve the problem of what to do about the two lions who’d camped out under the tree waiting for the hunters to drop like ripe fruit into their mouths. As time past and darkness started to fall, the three hunters took it in turns to urinate on the lions. This only made the lions angry and they roared at the hunters but they did back off a little. However, they didn’t back off far enough to allow the hunters to climb down the tree and escape.

As the light began to fail and the lions settled down for the night, the humans ate a meal of grubs and leaves before making nests for themselves in amongst the branches and going to sleep. Fearful of falling out of the tree, Shine found herself waking up every time she shifted position. Eventually she became so tired that she stopped moving and fell into a deep sleep where she found herself dreaming again. Once more she saw the girl with the dark hair who seemed to be calling to her, but Shine could never see her face properly and the girl was always just out of reach. Turning over in her sleep, Shine felt herself falling.

“AAAAAAAGH!” she screamed as she plummeted towards the ground.

Hitting the hard ground with a bone jarring thump, Shine sprang to her feet and scrambled frantically back up the tree trunk. Afterwards she couldn’t explain how she’d managed it. There’d been no handholds and she’d been unable to run and jump to catch hold of the lowest branch. It was only after Lone-Hunter and One-Eye had pulled her to safety that the three humans had bothered to look to see what the lions were doing. Having been expecting to be torn apart, Shine was relieved to see that the lions had gone.

“Maybe they got bored and left?” One-Eye suggested.

“Maybe they’re hiding waiting to spring out on us when we climb down,” Shine replied suspiciously; she _really_ didn’t like lions.

Waiting until the sun was two or three fingers above the horizon, Lone-Hunter eventually proved to Shine that the lions had in fact gone by jumping down from the tree and not getting eaten. Reluctantly, Shine climbed down after One-Eye had pointed out that she couldn’t stay up there forever.

“Look!” Shine snapped at her friend’s teasing, “I really don’t like lions, that’s all, okay?”

0=0=0=0

The day was bright and warm enough so the three hunters could roll up their cloaks and carry them on their backs. As they walked they managed to keep their hunger at bay by eating the nuts, berries and leaves that they found along the way. As the sun started to head for the horizon again they came to an area with gently rolling hills and more trees and bushes. This was more like the country in their valley and they started to feel more comfortable.

“What’s that?” Shine sniffed, she was always the one to catch a scent first.

“Not more lions is it?” One-Eye joked and got punched on the arm for his pains, “Owww!” he moaned as he rubbed the spot where Shine had hit him.

“Baby,” Lone-Hunter muttered only to have Shine slap him too.

“Will you two fools shut up?” Shine hissed angrily, she crouched down as she slowly moved forward sniffing at the air.

“What do you smell?” Lone-Hunter asked when he realised that Shine was being deadly serious.

“Like,” Shine sniffed deeply, “like a dead fire, like the fire smelt at the cave after it’d gone out.”

“Where?” Now One-Eye was crouching by her side.

“Up ahead,” Shine pointed to a clump of bushes two-two-hands-of-two-hands of paces away.

“Perhaps its not totally dead,” One-Eye pointed out hopefully.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Shine grinned optimistically as she started to trot towards the bushes.

The three hunters made it to the bushes without being challenged. Pausing on the edge of the area they sniffed the air again. The fire or what had been a fire was so close now they could all smell it. They could also smell human waste; people of some kind had camped here. Moving cautiously between the bushes they came to a wide clearing with the remains of a large fire in the middle of it.

“F’oook!” Cursed Shine; the fire was so dead it didn’t even smoke any more.

Despondently the three hunters walked slowly over to the remains of the fire and sat down around its cold embers. Picking up a charred piece of wood, One-Eye touched the burnt end carefully.

“Its not even warm,” he told the others; he’d remembered that if you found a piece of wood with just a little red ember in it you could sometimes breath life back into it. “it’s times like this I wish I’d paid more attention to what my mom was doing with the fire.”

“Never mind,” Shine put her arm around One-Eye’s shoulder and rested her head against his, “look,” she tried to sound hopeful, “this fire proves there’s people about so all we have to do is find them and get them to give us some of their fire.”

“Shouldn’t take long,” Lone-Hunter agreed as he poked the remains of the fire, “a fire like this must mean a big clan or even a tribe. That many people will leave a lot of tracks to follow.” He smiled, “By this time tomorrow we’ll be heading home with some new shiny fire…what’s this?” As he’d been talking, Lone-Hunter had been stirring the ashes with a stick and he’d turned up something amongst the remains of the fire. “MEAT!” He cried joyfully as he grabbed the charred piece of animal.

Eagerly he scrapped the worst burn pieces off the lump of flesh with his knife as the others looked on hungrily. Satisfied that he’d saved all he could, Lone-Hunter cut the piece of meat into three more or less equal parts and passed them around to his friends. Hungrily, Shine almost snatched the charred meat from Lone-Hunter’s hand, there wasn’t much actual meat left on the bone but hopefully she could break the bone and find some marrow. Just as she was about to start gnawing on the bone her eyes fell on something in the ashes that made her lose her appetite.

“GUYS!” Shine yelled as she knocked the food from her friend’s hands; they snarled at her angrily, but she pointed into the remains of the fire, “LOOK!”

Slowly, Lone-Hunter and One-Eye looked to where Shine was pointing and immediately started to retch and spit. Slowly, Shine reached out and picked up the blackened skull, the people who’d camped here before were people-eaters.

“NOOO!” Wailed One-Eye as he spat to clear his mouth of what little meat he’d started to chew on.

“No one swallowed, right?” Shine asked; she’d not even taken a proper bite, but just touching the stuff to her lips made her feel sick in her stomach.

“No!” Both Lone-Hunter and One-Eye reassured her.

“Okay,” Shine sighed with relief; her mother had told her what happened to people who ate man-flesh, “we should be alright then.”

“What do we do now?” One-Eye asked miserably; he was totally convinced that he’d never see Chase again; this journey had been doomed from the start.

“Okay,” Shine thought really hard; she’d noticed that as long as lions weren’t involved she could sometimes think through problems quicker than even One-Eye who was very clever; but not as fast as Night-Watcher who knew everything. “Look, these people eaters can make fire, right?”

“Right!” Lone-Hunter nodded his head beginning to see where Shine was going with her thought.

“We can track them, yes?” Shine looked at Lone-Hunter who nodded his head emphatically. “So,” Shine grinned like Moon-Wolf did when he saw prey, “we steal fire from them and maybe kill some of them!”

“YES!” Agreed the two males; no one liked people-eaters for obvious reasons.

“We’ll camp here tonight and start out as the sun rises tomorrow,” Shine added, proud of her plan, “Tomorrow we’ll have fire and there’ll be less people-eaters in the world!”

The three heroes cheered and waved their weapons in the air.

0=0=0=0


	5. Chapter 5

5.

**The Raid.**

“There!” Shine pointed to where the tiny figures of people disappeared over the crest of a low hill.

They’d been following the tracks of the people-eaters all morning and this was the first glimpse of the eater tribe that they’d caught. Kneeling in the long grass either side of Shine, Lone-Hunter and One-eye followed her pointing finger and made worried noises in the backs of their throats. There were definitely a lot more of the people-eaters than they’d at first thought, too many for them to fight even with Shine’s unnatural strength. They would have to win by being sneaky instead.

Looking up at the sun, Shine gauged how much daylight there was left. Next she studied the ground between her little party and the man-eater tribe. Without even realising she was doing it, her mind worked out how fast they’d be able to travel and how long it would take her and her friends to catch up with the man-eaters. She smiled and nodded to herself when her mind came up with an answer that pleased her, she glanced at Lone-Hunter.

“We can catch them before dark if we start out soon and hurry,” Shine informed the tall hunter.

“Agreed,” Lone-Hunter replied without much enthusiasm, “but there’s too many to fight.”

“Then we won’t fight,” Shine grinned a wicked grin, she’d got another plan.

0=0=0=0

Hanging by her arms and ankles from the tree, Alala worried at her bonds with her teeth. Very soon the tribe of people-eaters who’d captured her would decide it was her turn to be eaten. Several days ago she’d been out hunting the people-eaters with a few of the hunters from her tribe and wandered too far from home. By the time they’d realised how far they’d gone, it was too far to get back home before night. So, they’d camped between some big rocks out on the plain for the night; it was there they’d been ambushed.

It was just after they’d all fallen asleep that the people-eaters had attacked, there’d been a lot of them and they were all very strong, one was almost as strong as she was. Although Alala had fought very hard and had killed several of the people-eaters and injured some more. They’d eventually clubbed her to the ground and tied her up with leather thongs that even her strength couldn’t break. Over the next few days she’d watched, horrified as the people-eaters had devoured her tribe-mates. After some argument the people-eaters had decided to leave her to last as she’d been the strongest and bravest of their captives.

Biting frantically at the thong around her wrists, Alala glanced over her shoulder to where the people-eaters gnawed on the bones of her fellow hunters and eyed her hungrily. Whimpering quietly Alala redoubled her attack on her bonds. With a little cry of joy she felt the thong start to part under the assault of her sharp teeth. If she could just free herself, she knew that she’d be able to escape. The people-eaters weren’t very clever and she could run really fast, faster than anyone in her tribe in fact.

Just as the first piece of thong parted under her teeth, Alala heard something, there was something crawling towards the people-eater camp through the long grass. It would just be her luck that a pack of jackals or something had got hungry enough to try their luck with the people-eaters. Whining with fear and frustration, Alala continued to try and free herself, life she decided wasn’t fair. Having almost escaped from the people-eaters it now looked like she was going to be torn apart by jackals. But, she had to try, she had to get back to her people they relied on her to protect them from the things in the water.

0=0=0=0

Creeping through the long grass, Shine could smell the smoke from the people-eater’s fire and hear their grunting language. As she’d got closer to the people-eaters she’d felt more and more uneasy like she did when a Night-Walker was sniffing around the cave. Beginning to think that the people-eaters weren’t real people or even Beast-men, Shine took a deep breath to steady her racing heart and told herself to be brave and not be such a girl. Pursing her lips, Shine told herself that she was a girl and that’s all she’d ever wanted to be, she didn’t want to be a hunter or… Sighing, Shine lay down in the grass, shut her eyes tight and told the frightened girl in her head to shut-up because she had a job to do and people were relying on her. Reluctantly the other Shine, the Shine that wanted to snuggle with her mate and have babies went back to her cave and left hunter Shine to do her work.

Pushing herself slowly up onto her hands and knees, Shine looked carefully between the blades of grass towards the eater’s camp. There was a particularly big and nasty looking eater sitting next to the fire chewing on the few bits of meat that hung from a long bone. Not very far away were some other people-eaters, but the big eater chief was the one Shine thought she’d have to fight if the plan went as it should. Taking a firm grip on her spear, she drew her legs up under her in readiness to spring to her feet and rush towards the fire; she had to remember that the fire was the reason they were here, nothing else.

Hearing the sound of One-Eye’s cry, Shine turned her head to see him shouting and jumping up and down attracting the eater’s attention. The people-eaters obviously weren’t very clever as they just stood up and gazed foolishly at One-Eye’s prancing figure. With a final dance-like jump and a loud cry he ran off a few paces and disappeared behind a large bush.

The man-eaters looked at each other and grunted in confusion. The big eater by the fire stood up and started to shout at his fellows, obviously telling them that tomorrow’s food was getting away. Picking up their crude weapons the eater tribesmen were just about to start out after One-Eye when, Lone-Hunter jumped from behind another bush a little further away and started to shout and caper. Lone-Hunter’s frolicking made Shine laugh so hard that she had to clamp her hand over her mouth to stop herself from giving away her position.

The appearance of Lone-Hunter threw the eaters into even more confusion; they really didn’t know what to do. To them it seemed that lunch had disappeared behind one bush only to reappear from behind another bush much further away. ‘Big-Nasty-eater’ by the fire roared in anger as he moved away from the fire and started to cuff his eater friends about the head. By the way the lesser people-eaters cowered and whimpered, Shine realised that even his own tribe-mates must be frightened of Big-Nasty.

However, Big-Nasty had moved away from the fire and it was time for Shine to complete her part of the plan. As she was the fastest runner, it had been decided that once Lone-Hunter and One-Eye had distracted the eaters and drawn them away from the fire, she’d dash in and grab a burning branch and run. Once they’d lost any pursuit they’d all meet at the big rock they’d seen earlier.

Jumping to her feet, Shine sprinted for the campfire. As she ran she found herself being distracted by a feeling she’d not felt before, looking over her shoulder she saw a figure crouching under a tree, as it wasn’t an eater, she didn’t worry about it and put her feeling down to the strangeness of life. Sliding to a halt, she found herself at the fire, it wasn’t a big fire by any means but it was a good fire and there was a branch one end in the fire and the other sticking out of it, that she could easily remove. Grabbing hold of the non-hot end, Shine pulled the branch from the fire. For a moment she stood and looked at the fire in wonder. Blinking her eyes to break the spell that the fire had cast over her, she looked over to where Lone-Hunter and One-Eye drew the people-eaters away from the camp.

Turning, Shine started to run, her swift legs taking her further and further away from the eaters and towards safety. The sound of Big-Nasty’s cry of rage as he saw the fire thief making her escape only made Shine run even faster…too fast. This was were the plan all fell apart, Shine had run so fast that she put out the fire and the bright, orange and red flames turned quickly to dull grey smoke. With a look of shocked hopelessness, and a whimper of disappointment, Shine stood with the smouldering branch in her hand. It didn’t take her long to realise she’d have to go back.

Dropping the useless branch, Shine turned and started to run back towards the fire. By this time the people-eaters had disappeared into the bushes as they ran after One-Eye and Lone-Hunter. However, standing between Shine and the fire stood Big-Nasty with an enormous club in his hands and he didn’t look pleased. Stumbling to a halt in front of Big-Nasty, Shine took her spear in both hands and jabbed at Big-Nasty’s face hoping to poke out one of his eyes. In reply, Big-Nasty knocked her spear away to one side and roared at her.

With a yelp of fear, Shine jumped away from all the long sharp teeth in Big-Nasty’s mouth. This wasn’t right, she told herself; although Big-Nasty looked like a very big beast-man, beast-men didn’t have teeth like that. It finally dawned on Shine that Big-Nasty was a monster not a person or even a beast-man. 

Dodging under Big-Nasty’s club swing, Shine tried to stab the monster in the foot with her spear. Although she missed she did make Big-Nasty jump back towards the fire. An idea came to her mind. Yelling and jumping from side to side so as not to give Big-Nasty a stationary target, Shine advanced on her foe jabbing with her spear forcing the monster back and closer to the fire.

In return, Big-Nasty roared and swung his club at the annoying little creature that was trying to steal his fire. However, Shine was too fast for him to hit and her spear was far too fast to block every time it struck out at him. Getting caught up in the hunting-magic that sometime took over a hunter when he or she was fighting with their prey, Shine got just a little bit too close to Big-Nasty’s club.

Managing to stab him in the chest, Shine cried out in triumph thinking she’d given him a mortal wound, but Big-Nasty wasn’t to be killed so easily. Swinging his great, ponderous club, Big-Nasty caught Shine a solid blow that sent her tumbling across the dusty campsite. Rolling to a stop, Shine shook her head trying to free it of the pretty coloured birds that flew in front of her eyes. Groaning, she was just about to climb back to her feet when Big-Nasty leaped on her and pinned her to the ground.

Struggling for her life, Shine managed to free one hand and arm from Big-Nasty’s rancid embrace, she struck him across the chin as hard as she could. Blood flew from Big-Nasty’s mouth as his lips were cut on his own teeth at the force of her blow. Crying out in hurt, Big-Nasty clutched at his bloody mouth and knelt back on his heels forgetting about Shine while he tried to comfort his pain. 

Kicking with her legs, Shine tried to scramble away from Big-Nasty and towards the fire. The thought had entered her mind that the other eaters might just decide to come back. While she was fairly confident that she could defeat Big-Nasty (given time) she couldn’t fight the entire tribe, it was time to get the fire and run away. Pushing herself along with her hands and feet, Shine made her way towards the fire. Realising that his prey was getting away again, Big-Nasty roared sending a spray of blood through the air as he threw himself at Shine. However, he’d misjudged the speed with which Shine was moving and instead of landing on her body he landed between her legs.

Punching him as hard as she could, Shine tried to break away from Big-Nasty’s grasp, he held her around her thighs preventing her from using her legs to escape. Looking up into Shine’s face, Big-Nasty drew back his bloody lips from his teeth and growled before lowering his head and biting Shine between her legs. Screaming in agony, Shine thrashed about as the pain washed over her. It hurt worse than anything she’d ever experienced before in her life. Frantically her hands searched for a weapon, anything she could use to make the monster stop hurting her. Her fingers closed around the handle of her knife, desperately she grasped the flint knife before bringing it swinging down to stab her attacker in the shoulders and neck. At the first blow blood spurted from Big-Nasty’s neck which made him stop biting her. Her second blow caught him on his thickly muscled shoulders and sliced deeply into his flesh, blood oozed and spurted from Big-Nasty’s wounds as Shine stabbed him time and time again. Eventually he stopped biting her and lay still between her blood stained legs. 

Whimpering in pain, Shine rolled over onto her side; keeping her thighs tightly together she rolled into a ball and sobbed as she pushed her fingers between her legs. Pulling her hand away, she held it front of her face and forced her tightly closed eyes to open; her hand was bloody but she couldn’t be sure whether it was her blood or Big-Nasty’s. After taking a few deep breaths she felt the pain start to recede.

Forcing herself on to her hands and knees, Shine slowly and carefully stood up. Trembling with fear at what she might see, Shine looked down at herself. Although there was a lot of blood trickling down her legs not all of it was hers, although it still hurt to move the pain wasn’t as near as bad as it had been. Wiping her tear blurred eyes on the back of her hand she saw the reason why. There were teeth marks through the tough leather of her hunting dress; it looked like the deer hide had saved her from the worst of Big-Nasty’s attack. Although the wound didn’t seem as bad as she’d at first feared she still wished Elm was here to use her healing magic on it.

Walking carefully towards the fire, Shine picked up a couple of nicely burning branches. On a whim she threw as many of the other burning branches into the dust where hopefully they’d go out and leave the people-eaters with no fire to cook their prey over. Slowly at first, but picking up speed as she moved, Shine started to head for the meeting place she’d arranged with her friends. Perhaps they could rest tonight and head back to the cave tomorrow.

0=0=0=0

Crouching in the long grass behind a bush, Alala had watched the girl with the hair the colour of dried grass fight the eater chief. The light haired girl was strong and pretty almost as strong and pretty as Alala was and when the chief had bitten the girl between her legs, Alala had felt a pain between her own legs as if she’d been bitten too. Getting to her feet, she started to run forward to help the girl but stopped when she saw her stabbing the chief to death with her knife.

Sighing with relief, Alala hid in the grass again and almost cried with frustration; she wanted to go and help the light-haired-girl but her duty to her own tribe was holding her back, but, the need she felt to go and help and comfort the other girl was almost too strong to resist. Watching as the light-haired girl got slowly to her feet, Alala felt tears trickle down her own face as the girl whimpered and examined her wounds. Following the other girl with her eyes, Alala decided that she’d follow her just to make sure she found her friends again and was safe. Once she knew that the girl was safe she’d head on back to her tribe and think no more about these strange events.

0=0=0=0

By the time, Lone-Hunter and One-Eye got to the meeting place it was getting dark and Shine had used the branches she’d taken to build a fire. Both Lone-Hunter and One-Eye danced for joy when they saw the fire and Shine in the shelter of the big rock. They were so happy that at first they didn’t notice the pained look on Shine’s face or the dried blood on her legs. Once their initial joy at having fire and being able to go home again was past, it was One-Eye who noticed that something was wrong with Shine.

“Hey Shine,” he touched Shine’s knee and made her wince as her leg moved, “what’s wrong?”

“Hurt,” Shine whimpered miserably.

“Hurt?” Lone-Hunter gave her a concerned look, after all they were nearly brother and sister now he’d snuggled with Dusk, “Hurt where?”

“Don’t want to say,” Shine drew her legs up closer to her chest.

“Don’t be silly,” One-Eye glanced at Lone-Hunter in fear, what if Shine died? “Come-on,” One-Eye persisted gently, “you better tell us and let us look…now where are you hurt?”

“Ooooh!” Shine wailed knowing she’d have to tell her friends some time, “I got bitten on my girl-place if you must know and it hurts!”

“Girl-place?” One-Eye and Lone-Hunter looked at each other in confusion.

“Oh, for crying out loud!” Shine watched the puzzled expressions on the two hunter’s faces in the fire light. “Where little hunters and little gatherers are different!” She explained angrily, “That’s my girl-place!”

“Oh!” Lone-Hunter literally kicked himself for being so stupid.

“Ah!” One-Eye agreed before screwing up his courage and asking, “Do you want me to take a look?”

“NO!” Shine snarled angrily and bared her teeth at One-Eye who recoiled from her a little, Shine relaxed again, “Oh, I’m sorry One-Eye I didn’t mean to snarl.”

“That’s okay,” One-Eye reached out his hand and stroked Shine’s arm carefully, “but you should let me look at it.”

“But…” Shine knew One-Eye was right, she’d not been able to bring herself to look properly, “Okay, but only you, alright? Lone-Hunter you look the other way.”

Once Lone-Hunter had his back turned, One-Eye took a burning twig from the fire and crawled over to Shine. Lifting up the bottom of her skirt, Shine let One-Eye look at her girl-place, after all he only had one eye so he’d only see half of it.

“Hmmm,” One-Eye tried to sound wise like Elm did when she was healing a wound; he couldn’t see much other than dried blood mixed in with Shine’s yellow girl-place hair. “I can’t see very much, but tomorrow we’ll go to the river and wash it then you should take a good look for yourself.”

“I should?” Shine asked uncertainly.

“You should,” One-Eye agreed firmly; to be honest Shine’s girl-place looked a little like Chase’s had after she’d had their baby and it worried One-Eye, a wound like that could go bad and Shine could die.

“Okay, Lone-Hunter,” Shine called as she pushed her skirt back into place, “you can turn around now…” Lone-Hunter didn’t move, “…Lone-Hunter?”

“Its alright,” One-Eye smiled after he’d taken a look at Lone-Hunter, “he’s fallen asleep.”

“Typical,” Shine muttered as she settled down and tried to make herself comfortable so she could sleep.

0=0=0=0

A little further away than the three people around the fire could see, Alala crouched in the grass and watched what the men were doing to the light-haired-girl. The two men seemed to be being nice to her and helping her. This was unlike the men of her own tribe who treated her with suspicion; the women were just as bad. But both the men and women of her tribe were glad she was there when the water-monsters came to take one of the children. Then they were glad she was stronger and faster than any of the tribe’s warriors and the women forgot at least for a while that she was prettier than they were.

Perhaps, Alala smiled, perhaps she’d stay and watch these strangers, in particular she’d watch the light-haired-girl. Just to be sure that she was alright, and if she wasn’t, Alala knew a little healing magic that might help. Her duty to her ungrateful tribe could wait, maybe if a water-monster took another child while she wasn’t there to save it they’d learn to respect her more.

0=0=0=0

**A few of notes on Shine’s world.**

Shine and her people are what we would call, Cro-Magnon people; she lives at about the end of the last Ice Age in what is now Southern France or Northern Italy.

Old Ones; these are what we’d call Neanderthal Man. They live to the north of Shine’s people nearer the ice fields. Shine’s people and the ‘Old Ones’ mostly co-exist peacefully, mainly because they don’t have very much contact with each other.

Beast-men; Big Nasty and his crew are works of fiction. It might be best to imagine them as looking like Yeti or ‘Big-Foot’ type creatures. They are strong and powerful and are mostly covered in fur-like hair so they don’t wear clothes. They use fire, but have to steal it or find it; they also use and make primitive weapons and tools, however they prefer to steal these off more advanced peoples. Although they have a primitive language they aren’t particularly bright and are easily taken over by the evil spirits of this time.

Shine; out hero is about as strong as Buffy was in Season One. The main difference between Buffy and Shine is that Shine will use weapons more than Buffy ‘will’ but is probably less skilled in hand-to-hand fighting (martial arts having not been invented).

The Shadow Men; a fiction dreamed up by later Watchers to explain the birth of the slayer and give them credit for calling her. In reality, Slayers are female versions of the Heroes of myth, they have stood between mankind and the darkness from time out of mind.


	6. Chapter 6

6.

Dark.

Scratching his head in confusion and worry, One-Eye sat back on his heels and watched Shine. Although she was close to the fire and wrapped up in her deer skin cloak, she was shivering and sweating. He knew this meant Shine had a fever, you often got a fever after being cut or bitten, but what really worried him was the certain fact that Shine _never_ got fevers. In fact he couldn’t remember Shine _ever_ being sick even when she’d been a little girl. Apart from keeping her warm, One-Eye didn’t know what to do for the best. Now, if Elm was here she’d work some of her healing magic and Shine would be well again in no time. But, Elm wasn’t here and he didn’t know what to do to make his friend well again, he made things he didn’t heal people.

“How is she?” Lone-Hunter asked.

“Sick,” One-Eye replied before adding, “worse than yesterday.”

“F’oook,” Lone-Hunter replied softly; it looked like he was going to have to make some hard decisions soon, “how much worse?”

Stroking Shine’s wet hair, One-Eye shrugged.

“Look,” Lone-Hunter sighed heavily, he wasn’t looking forward to what he had to say, “we’ve got the fire and we’ve got to get it back to the clan.”

“Are you saying we leave Shine here?” One-Eye asked his temper starting to rise; he’d known Shine all his life and he’d loved her for most of it too. “If we do you know she’ll die or be killed.”

“But if we don’t get back to the clan they’ll all die,” Lone-Hunter pointed out urgently.

“Oooooh!” One-Eye moaned and put his hands over his head, this sort of thinking made his head hurt.

It was an impossible decision to make; he didn’t want Chase or her baby to die, in fact he didn’t want any of his clan-mates to die, but he didn’t want Shine to die either. For a moment he examined his feelings for Chase and Shine, but this just made his head hurt even more so he stopped. Sitting there looking at his sick friend, One-Eye slowly realised that someone was going to die. Leave Shine and she would die, not go back to the clan and they’d all die.

What would Shine want him to do? Slowly, One-Eye shook his head, Shine wouldn’t want her mother and sister to die; she wouldn’t want any of her friends to die for her sake. They would have to leave her behind. Turning to Lone-Hunter, One-Eye was just about to open his mouth to speak when the big hunter beat him to it.

“Although I’d like to get home to snuggle some more with Dusk,” Lone-Hunter explained with a slight smile, “I also don’t want Shine to die.”

“So?” One-Eye asked miserably, he was already imagining life without Shine; his thoughts didn’t make him happy.

“Maybe there’s another way,” Lone-Hunter placed his hand on his clan-brother’s shoulder. “Look, there’s plenty of dried meat in the cave right?”

One-Eye nodded.

“So, no one’s going to starve for a while, right?”

Again One-Eye nodded his agreement.

“What I’m thinking is,” Lone-Hunter continued slowly, “we could stay the rest of the day, if Shine gets better we can start for home tomorrow.”

Looking at the ground, One-Eye thought about this very hard. It was true what Lone-Hunter said, the clan had plenty of food for now. They could all snuggle together for warmth at night; Moon-Wolf would protect them, so why not wait a little longer?

“Okay,” One-Eye said slowly, “we stay until dawn tomorrow,” he swallowed the big lump in his throat, “If Shine’s no better by tomorrow dawn we leave her behind, but…”

“But?” Lone-Hunter didn’t like the look in his brother’s eye.

“…but, I won’t leave her to be eaten alive,” One-Eye said slowly.

“You mean…” Lone-Hunter was shocked by One-Eye’s bravery for even thinking such a thing, he was going against one of the tribe’s strongest laws.

“I’ll send her beyond the sky before we leave,” One-Eye explained, “I won’t leave her to start her journey alone.”

Clasping One-Eye in his strong arms, Lone-Hunter hugged his brother knowing he could never have the strength to do what One-Eye was suggesting. Lone-Hunter was the strongest hunter in the tribe (except for Shine) but One-Eye was stronger in other ways, stronger than he’d ever be.

“Look,” Lone-Hunter let go of One-Eye and picked up his spear and throwing stick, “I’ll go out and catch us lunch. We could both do with a good meal and maybe we can get Shine to eat something and get strong again.”

“Yeah,” One-Eye replied with a nod of his head, “I need to work out a way of carrying the fire,” he gestured at the campfire and forced a laugh, “I mean we can’t move it like that.”

0=0=0=0

It was plain to Alala that the two males with the light-haired-girl didn’t know what to do. It was also obvious to her that they were both reluctant to leave her behind. In fact when one got up to leave the other stayed with her while he did something around the campfire. This made Alala frown; in her tribe the males wouldn’t think twice about leaving a sick female behind, even herself who was stronger than all of them and saved them from the water-monsters. Of course they wouldn’t leave one of the breeders behind, but an ordinary female like her, the males wouldn’t even notice she’d gone.

But these two males looked really upset about the female being sick, perhaps she was one of her tribe’s breeders, maybe that was why they were so concerned. Frowning, Alala shook her head; if the she was a breeder why had she been allowed to fight the day before? In fact, why wasn’t she safely back at this tribe’s home with her belly full of babies? Shaking her head in confusion, Alala didn’t know what to think and slapped herself over the head with her hands in frustration, it didn’t help.

Apart from all these unanswerable questions were her own feelings towards the girl. Something inside her was drawing her to the light-haired-girl, a warm feeling low in her belly and a sort of ache in her chest. Somehow she knew that the only way to make these feeling go away was for her to go to the light-haired-girl and help her. It was evident that the two males didn’t know even as much healing magic as she did, she had to do something. Standing up from behind the bush where she’d been hiding, she started to walk towards the camp. As she got closer she started to call out to show she wasn’t dangerous.

“Hi!” Alala called in her most friendly voice, “I’m not dangerous, I wanna to help.”

Alala paused as she watched the remaining male grab his spear and throwing stick. It was only now she was closer that she noticed the patch over the male’s eye and the scar on his face that cut through his eye socket. Again this made Alala frown; the male must have lost an eye. In her own tribe that would have meant he’d be left to die, obviously this male’s tribe must be powerful enough to allow badly wounded hunters to live.

“I won’t hurt you,” Alala called as she got closer, “I can make the female well again.”

0=0=0=0

Scrabbling for his spear and throwing stick, One-Eye watched in trepidation as the girl appeared out of the grass. Getting ready to defend himself and Shine, One-Eye studied the approaching woman. The first thing he noticed was that she didn’t wear any skins, not one. This wasn’t so unusual; his own tribe didn’t wear skins in the summer when it got very hot. Instead of skins the girl’s body was painted to make her hard to see in the grass; One-Eye realised that she must use the same things to paint herself as Night-Watcher used to paint his pictures on the cave walls.

The girl was closer now; she kept up an incessant stream of words (which One-Eye couldn’t understand) that didn’t sound threatening so he relaxed a little. It was beginning to dawn on him that the girl didn’t mean him or Shine any harm, in fact it sounded as if she wanted to help. By now the girl was only a few paces away and One-Eye had relaxed enough to put down his spear. The painted girl kept jabbering on in her strange and slightly annoying sounding language as she gestured at Shine and pointed to herself.

Not knowing what else to do or say, One-Eye shrugged and grunted; he tried to put over the message that if the girl wanted to help Shine that was fine, but he’d kill her if she tried to hurt his friend. Smiling, the girl started to gather leaves and berries. Putting them into her mouth she chewed them for a while before spitting them out onto a flat stone. Having seen Elm do things like this, One-Eye sighed with relief, perhaps the girl was a wise woman like Elm and knew healing magic.

0=0=0=0

So far so good, thought Alala when the male didn’t try to kill her. However, he watched her closely as she gathered up some herbs and berries that were good for festering wounds. After chewing the things she’d gathered for a while and spitting them out onto a rock, Alala noticed that the one eyed male relaxed some more. Good, she thought, perhaps he won’t attack if I touch the female. Slowly, carefully and keeping up a stream of soft words, Alala edged towards the light-haired-girl. Alala had seen the People-eater-chief bite her and she guessed that the chief’s bite was poisonous.

“Right,” Alala said to herself as knelt down next to the female, “this is where I see if he trusts me.”

Half expecting to feel the male’s spear being thrust into her side, Alala moved the skin from on top of the female and pulled up her covering so she could see where she’d been bitten.

“EEEEWWW!” Alala squealed making the male start and grab for his spear again; noticing the motion Alala smiled hopefully at the male and waited for him to relax again.

With a sigh of relief, Alala turned back to look at the wound. The light-haired-girl had been bitten right on the place where males put babies into a breeder.

“That must have hurt,” Alala said to herself remembering how the girl had screamed when the chief had bitten her.

Going back to her pile of half chewed herbs and berries she beat them with a stone mashing up the more stubborn berries. When Alala had reduced them to a pulp, she went back to the light-haired-female and got down between her legs. Using her tongue and lips she sucked all the poison from the female’s wounds before putting the healing magic back into her mouth. Next she transferred the pulp from her mouth to the girl’s wounds packing the pulp into the tooth holes with her tongue.

0=0=0=0

Fascinated, One-Eye watched what the painted-girl was doing with her tongue between Shine’s legs. He was a little concerned when Shine started to moan, but he calmed down again when he realised that they were happy-moans not hurt-moans coming from his friend’s mouth. He smiled; obviously the painted-girl wasn’t doing any harm so he let her get on with her healing magic.

0=0=0=0

Having sucked out all the dried blood and poison and replaced it with the pulp, Alala sat back and spat out the bits and pieces in her mouth. Looking at the male she made drinking motions. The male nodded his head, picked up a skin bag and headed off in the direction of the small stream near the camp. Staying with the girl, Girl covered her up again, at least the two males had known enough to keep her warm, which was good.

It was only when the male came back with the water that, Alala realised that he’d left weapons easily within her reach. Either he trusted her, or in his tribe females didn’t use weapons; but, the light-haired-girl had used weapons…this was all too confusing for her, she’d try and work it out later.

0=0=0=0

After washing out her mouth, Alala took a drink. Next she took some water into her own mouth and placed her lips over Shine’s before squirted some of it into her mouth. Nodding his head, One-Eye smiled to himself; these were all things he’d seen Elm do for people who were hurt or sick. 

When Lone-Hunter returned with a small deer he’d speared, the painted-girl had seemed frightened, but One-Eye calmed her and Lone-Hunter did his best to act in a non-threatening way, which was difficult for such a big, strong hunter like him. Very soon the painted-girl relaxed again and went back to stroking Shine’s head and crooning what sounded like a healing song.

Once the deer was cooked and Lone-Hunter had taken the first slice, as was his right as he’d caught the deer, One-Eye nearly burst into loud laughter when he offered the painted girl a portion of the meat before taking any himself, the look on her face had been so comical.

“Come-on,” he said in a friendly tone, “even if Shine doesn’t get well, you’ve tried really hard to make her better you deserve your share of the meat.”

“You know,” Lone-Hunter said to his brother between mouthfuls of deer, “if you got that paint off her she’d be quite pretty…” Lone-Hunter noticed the look One-Eye was giving him, before hurriedly adding, “…not as pretty as Dusk of course, but…”

“But?” One-Eye glanced from Lone-Hunter to the painted girl as he chewed.

“Well, I was thinking,” Lone-Hunter gestured to the girl, “a pretty girl like that could attract another hunter to the clan and another hunter would make our lives easier.”

“Make _your_ life easier, don’t you mean?” One-Eye had no delusions about his hunting skills and although Moon-Wolf tried to help, when he was a wolf he hunted like a wolf; when he was a man he was worse than One-Eye.

“Of course,” Lone-Hunter agreed, “and now I’m snuggling Dusk there’ll be more babies so another hunter would be a big help. Imagine how much food two good hunters and Shine could bring home.”

“You’re right,” One-Eye nodded his head, as he watched the painted girl chew up meat and force it into Shine’s mouth, “but we only take her with us if she wants to go with us, okay?”

“Agreed!” Lone-Hunter smiled and nodded his head firmly.

0=0=0=0

It was late in the afternoon when Shine, awoke and sat up.

“Thirsty,” she announced to the world, before turning and watching the strange girl who was jabbering beside her and pointing excitedly at the water skin. “Who…?”

“This is Painted-Girl,” One-Eye announced as he held the water skin to Shine’s mouth and watched her drink, “she came out of the grass and healed you. Lone-Hunter and I think she’s lost, we’re thinking of taking her home with us so we can attract another hunter to the clan.”

In a couple of sentences One-Eye had explained most of what Shine had missed.

“Have you asked what she wants to do?” Shine wanted to know.

“Bit difficult with her jabbering away like that,” One-Eye gave his friend a lop-sided grin.

“I’m beginning to reconsider my idea about taking her with us,” Lone-Hunter came to join Shine and One-Eye, “she never seems to stop talking!”

“And no hunter wants a mate who can’t shut-up, is that it?” Shine asked.

“Well,” One-Eye smiled harder, “you’ve gotta admit it’s a bit wearing.”

Realising that the men were talking about her Alala shut up and backed away from the group.

“Hey, hey!” Shine cried reaching for the girl, “Don’t do that, I’ll…” Shine frowned at the two men as she struggled to her feet. “Everyone wait here I’ve got to go.”

“Go?” Lone-Hunter and One-Eye exchanged puzzled looks before turning them on Shine.

“Are you two stupid or something?” Shine sighed in exasperation, “You know, _go_!”

“Oooh!” The two men slapped their foreheads at their own stupidity, “ _GO_!”

Shine disappeared behind a bolder and went, several moments later she reappeared.

“Okay, guys,” Shine sat down cross legged in front of Painted-Girl but looked at her two man friends, “painted-girl is a stupid name for a girl. Leave me alone with her and I’ll try to find out her real name and what her story is.”

“Right,” agreed Lone-Hunter, “One-Eye wants to show me his fire carrier.”

“Yeah,” One-Eye jumped to his feet eager to show off his cleverness, “let’s leave the girls alone.”

0=0=0=0

Sitting cross legged facing each other, Shine let her eyes roam over the girl’s body. If she did go with them the paint would have to go and she’d need some skins to wrap up in. Going around naked like that was an open invitation to snuggle and the men already had mates so Shine didn’t want any trouble like that. Add the nakedness to the prettiness of the girl, Shine let a frown cross her face, if this girl came with them they needed to get her mated with someone quick or there’d be trouble with the other women in the clan.

“Okay,” Shine smiled at the girl’s confused expression, “what’s your name?”

The girl remained silent and stared into Shine’s eyes as if she’d never seen anything like them before. Perhaps she hadn’t, thought Shine, the girl’s eyes were brown, perhaps all her tribe had brown eyes. After a moment or two when the girl still didn’t answer, Shine tried again.

“Right, bit of a hard question, huh?” Shine thought for a moment, before placing her hand between her breasts, “I’m Shine, you are…?”

Still the girl said nothing.

“Okay so you’re terminally stupid or…” Shine shook her head, “…no you’re not stupid, I’m not doing this right.” Again she placed her hand between her breasts and said, “Shine,” before placing her hand between the girl’s breasts and raising a questioning eyebrow, “and you are…?”

“Alala!” The girl replied with a happy grin.

“Alala?” Shine asked uncertainly, it wasn’t a name she’d ever heard before, “Bit of a mouthful that.”

“Shine,” Alala touched Shine’s chest before touching her own and repeating, “Alala!”

“Hmmm,” Shine tried not to look confused but Alala must have seen something in her eyes and she lost her happy smile, “You know that name’s not going to work, how about we change it?”

Alala looked uncertainly at Shine.

“Here,” Shine took hold of a strand of her hair and repeated, “Shine,” as she rubbed her fingers up and down her hair, then she touched her chest and said, “Shine!” She saw the light dawn in Alala’s eyes as she connected the two ideas; Shine reached out and touched Alala’s dark brown hair, “Dark,” she said before touching Alala on the chest and repeating, “Dark!” 

Alala/Dark thought about this for a moment before touching herself and saying uncertainly, “Dark?” 

Shine nodded.

“Dark!” Dark repeated, she smiled and nodded her head, “DARK!” It was a much better name than ‘Alala’ which in her own tribe simply meant ‘female’ and all women were called Alala.

0=0=0=0


	7. Chapter 7

7.

Ambush.

Sitting next to the fire Shine taught Dark her words; it never once entered Shine’s mind that she should learn Dark’s language. But on the other hand, Dark seemed eager to learn Shine’s words for things and showed no interest in teaching Shine her own language on the few occasions Shine asked her about it.

Before the two girls had realised how late it was they found it was getting dark and One-Eye was building up the fire to protect them from the cold and the beasts that roamed the night. Although it was warm during the daylight at night it was becoming very cold; the evening chill made Shine think about how cold it must be getting up in the valley. Gazing off into the evening she could just see the mountains that loomed over her home valley, tomorrow they must head for home without delay.

As Shine laid out her sleeping skin and cloak ready for bed, she noticed Dark start to shiver and rub her arms with her hands as she moved closer to the fire.

“Hey, Dark,” Shine called softly, “you can snuggle with me tonight, keep warm, yes?”

“Snuggle?” Dark frowned questioningly at Shine.

Pursing her lips, Shine tried to workout how to explain ‘snuggle’ to her new friend. After a moment’s thought she went over to Dark, knelt down behind the girl and put her arms around her body before resting her head on her shoulder. Sighing contentedly, Shine pretended to snore, after another moment she let go of Dark and turned her so they were facing each other.

“Snuggle!” Shine smiled brightly before crawling over to her skins and climbing between them; patting the skin beside her she said, “Snuggle!” 

Getting the idea, Dark crawled over to where Shine lay and crawled under the skins with her. Snuggling up to Dark’s back, Shine put her arms around Dark’s body and pressed her breasts into the other girl’s back as she made contented noises and nuzzled her neck. This was nice, Shine thought, it was like she was back home and she was snuggled up safe and warm with her sister again. Thoughts of her sister made Shine sad for a moment, now Dusk had mated with Lone-Hunter she’d never snuggle with Shine again.

Feeling Dark move, Shine loosened her hold on the girl, for a minute Shine was worried that Dark didn’t want to snuggle with her, but she needn’t have worried, Dark was just shifting her position. Rolling over so she was facing Shine, Dark pressed her breasts hard against Shine’s

“Oh!” Shine said in surprise; this was nice too, nicer even than pressing her breasts against Dark’s back.

Lying face to face, Shine was surprised when Dark pressed her lips against hers. How odd, was Shine’s first thought no one had ever done that to her before. It was like nuzzling but more so, if that was possible. As Dark continued to press her lips against Shine’s she felt Dark’s tongue trying to push its way between her lips. Curious to see what would happen, Shine opened her mouth a little and let Dark touch her tongue with her own. At that first touch Shine’s body seemed to spasm with pleasure.

Moaning and writhing in excitement, Shine let Dark’s tongue explore the inside of her mouth as their tongues entwined and then separated only to entwine again moments later. Not being able to control herself, Shine rubbed her ‘girl-place’ against Dark as her hands roamed urgently over the other girl’s body. Pushing, Shine onto her back, Dark climbed on top of her and got into a position where they could rub their girl-places together while at the same time keep lip-nuzzling.

Lying on the other side of the fire, One-Eye looked out from under his cloak and turned towards where Shine and her new friend writhed and moaned under Shine’s sleeping skins.

“Do y’mind keeping the noise down over there?” he called tiredly, “Some of us want to sleep we’ve got a long journey tomorrow.”

His words didn’t have much effect. Shine and Dark’s moans and cries of pleasure got loader and louder until they both shrieked and collapsed into each others arms and lay still. Listening closely, One-Eye sighed with relief, the girl’s had stopped snuggling so now perhaps he could get some sleep.

0=0=0=0

Waking up just as the sun was peeping over the horizon, Shine knew instinctively that Dark had gone. Sitting up she found One-Eye and Lone-Hunter already awake and preparing to start their journey home.

“Where’s…” Shine began but was cut off by Lone-Hunter before she could finish her question.

“She’s gone,” Lone-Hunter explained simply, “she must have gone a little before first-light,” he pointed across the still dark land, “her tracks go that way. I followed them a little ways…I’m sorry I know you liked her but she’s gone.”

“Oh,” Shine said sadly as she slumped on her skins.

Wondering what she’d done to make Dark leave, Shine found her lips parting as if she was going to lip-nuzzle Dark’s soft, warm lips and she could almost feel Dark’s tongue in her mouth if she closed her eyes and remembered really hard.

“Ooooh,” Shine repeated in a very small voice, Dark’s absence was making her sad and being sad was no way to start a new day.

“Don’t be sad,” One-Eye came to sit next to her and gave her a big-brother-hug, “she’s probably gone back to her tribe, here,” One-Eye presented her with a piece of meat from yesterdays deer. “I expect she didn’t want you to cry when she left.”

After eating the meat One-Eye had given to her and drinking some water, Shine rolled up her skins and tied them across her body in a bundle to make it easier to carry. Taking hold of her weapons she climbed up onto the top of the big boulder they’d been camped next to and looked in the direction that Lone-Hunter had said Dark’s tracks had taken. It was lighter now and Shine’s sharp eyes could see more clearly. Staring off across the land it seemed to her that she could see a little figure in the far distance. The figure appeared to stop and look back the way it had come.

Without thinking, Shine raised her arm and waved. Deep down she knew that no one would see her wave at such a distance, so it was with a certain amount of wonder that she saw the little figure raise its own arm and wave back before turning and disappearing over the brow of a hill.

“Shine!” Lone-Hunter called.

“W-what?” Shine tore her eyes away from where the little figure had been standing.

“Come and see what One-Eye has made,” Lone-Hunter called.

Climbing down from the boulder, Shine went and crouched next to the two men. Watching intently as One-Eye transferred some fire from the campfire into a strange sort of basket made out of old bones, Shine couldn’t keep her mind off the idea that Dark still liked her even though she’d left; perhaps she’d not done anything to frighten the girl away.

“…I made this out of some fresh bones I found,” One-Eye explained, “they shouldn’t burn and if I tie it to the end of this stick.”

Tying his strange contraption to the end of a long stick with a length of hide, One-Eye sat back on his heels.

“There!” he announced proudly, “A fire carrier!”

Snapping back to the business in hand, Shine concentrated on One-Eye’s invention, she had to admit it was a very clever idea, she’d have certainly never thought of it.

“Very clever, One-Eye,” Shine leaned towards her friend and rested her head against his to show him how clever she thought he was. “So, the person behind you can keep an eye on the fire and feed it so it doesn’t go out.”

“Oh! Yeah!” One-Eye nodded his head vigorously, it was fairly obvious that he’d not thought of that himself.

“Come-on,” Lone-Hunter stood up, “it’s all very well having clever fire-baskets, but it won’t do anyone any good if we don’t get home with it.”

“Lone-Hunter’s right,” Shine got up and straightened her shoulders; however she might feel, she had a duty to her clan and that’s what came first; before even beautiful dark haired girls. “Let’s go!”

Leading the way, Shine set off towards the mountains followed by One-Eye and his fire-basket with Lone-Hunter bringing up the rear and making sure the fire didn’t go out.

Not too far away from the little group of hunters hid something that was nasty, brutish and big. It growled deep in its throat as its huge hands clutched the heavy, crude club it carried. When the eater was sure it wouldn’t be seen, it stood up and turned to run back to its camp. It had taken the tribe all of yesterday to pick a new leader and do the rituals to make the leader powerful and strong. But now they had a chief again their first task would be to hunt and eat the three puny 'new-men' who’d killed their old leader and stolen their fire.

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At about midday the three travellers halted to rest beside a babbling brook. Eating the nuts and berries they’d collected along the way they sat on a sun warmed stone in companionable silence. Moving down to the river to take a drink, Shine suddenly froze and listened for a moment. Sometimes if a hunter stared at a prey for too long or too hard the prey would sense the hunter and run off. This was exactly how Shine was feeling right now; there was something out there watching them, something that wanted to eat them. Continuing down to the river, Shine took her drink before climbing up to where Lone-Hunter sat.

“Do you feel that?” Shine asked.

“Like there’s eyes on us?” Lone-Hunter replied.

“That’s the one,” Shine nodded as she slowly turned to watch the trees in the distance.

They’d made good time so far, not having to stop and search they’d been able to take a more direct route towards home. By night fall they’d be at the edge of the great woods that connected to the woods near home. However, somewhere between the woods and where they now sat, lurked something that wanted to kill them and crack open their bones and suck out their marrow.

“One-Eye,” Shine called softly.

“Huh? What?” One-Eye looked up from where he’d been fiddling with his throwing stick trying to work out how to make it so he could use it to throw stones.

“Trouble,” Shine informed him simply, “be ready to run or fight.”

Whatever happened, One-Eye and the fire he carried must be protected; even if that meant Lone-Hunter and herself had to sacrifice themselves to ensure his safety.

“Ready?” Lone-Hunter stood as he unobtrusively checked his weapons.

“As I’ll ever be,” Shine stood up next to the hunter, “lets move.”

Striking out for the woods, Shine felt her feeling of doom and danger get stronger. Between Shine and her friends and the wood lay an open area of tall grass mixed with boulders that were just the right size for any number of things to hide behind. Onward Shine led her friends all the time resisting the urge to run. If they started to run no-one would stop and fight when the trap was sprung. If that happened they’d all die and the clan would die. Right at that moment Shine hated what she was, she hated all the responsibility that being what she was entailed. All she’d ever wanted to be was an ordinary girl who could snuggle with her mate and have babies. For a little while as she’d writhed in Dark’s arms the previous night she’d felt that this must be what being ‘normal’ was like. But the day had come, her dreams had been dashed once more and she found herself with the weight of her clan on her shoulders again. Today it was beginning to look as if that weight was going to crush her and her friends.

Stopping so suddenly that One-Eye had to dive to one side to avoid her spear, Shine stood and looked back the way they’d come. As she watched, several large figures appeared to rise from the grass. Now in full view, Shine recognised them for the eaters they’d stolen the fire from. The big, beast-man creatures started to grunt and yell while waving their primitive weapons over their heads. Turning to lead her friends away from danger, Shine was just in time to see another group of beast-men rise up from the ground.

“F’OOOK!” Shine yelled in anger; this wasn’t fair, she told herself as the battle anger rose up inside her.

They’d been brave and were bringing back fire to their clan and these things were going to stop her from succeeding. The three hunters formed themselves into a huddle so it would be easier to protect themselves. Deep down, Shine knew it was hopeless, they might fight bravely for a time but the beast-men were bigger and stronger than even Lone-Hunter. Eventually Shine knew that they’d even kill her.

Snarling at the advancing beast-men, Shine felt the battle-anger that had threatened to take her over begin to recede. Slowly a strange calm came to her and it was as if she could hear Night-Watcher’s voice talking to her calmly and quietly. After a moment of listening to Night-Watcher’s voice, Shine knew what she had to do.

“Protect, One-Eye the best you can,” she told Lone-Hunter before charging at the biggest badist looking eater.

What Night-Watcher’s voice had told her to do was to kill the eater chief. Once he was dead the others would run away and wouldn’t try to catch them until they’d chosen a new leader. By that time Shine and her friends would be nearly home again and the eaters wouldn’t follow.

Screaming her high-pitched warcry, Shine held her spear out in front of her and charged at the big eater. Like his predecessor he carried a big club and his mouth was full of long, sharp looking teeth, longer and sharper than any teeth should do. But this time, Shine knew what to expect and what to do; she knew not to let the eater bite her because his teeth carried poison; she knew that he was strong but his weakness was that he was slow and not as strong as she was.

Dodging under the eater’s club swing; Shine thrust at his belly with the beautiful, strong spear that One-Eye had made for her. Feeling the flint spearhead cut through the mouldy hides that the eater wore, she pushed harder still. Pushing as hard as she could she saw the fear in the beast-man’s eyes as he tried to hold back the spear thrust with one big hand but couldn’t. Hearing him cry-out in pain, she twisted her spear left and right forcing the eater to let go of the shaft.

Heaving on the spear, Shine pushed the wild-man backwards until he tripped over his own feet and fell onto his back. Laughing in her victory, Shine knew she had him at her mercy. Yanking the spear free of the eater’s belly she stabbed down time and time again stabbing the eater’s body as he cried out and tried to crawl away from her, but she didn’t let him escape. Keeping on stabbing, Shine didn’t notice that the spear head had broken but in the long run it didn’t matter.

Raising her spear shaft like it was a club, Shine brought it sweeping down on the beast-man’s head. There was a terrible, sickening sound like a giant egg being broken and the man-eater’s brains (such as they were) squirted from his smashed skull onto the dusty ground. Looking up from where her defeated foe lay, Shine saw all the other people-eaters, their weapons held limply in their hands just standing there and watching her. They made no move to attack her or her friends in fact it was almost as if they had been turned to stone and would stand there forever like the boulders.

After a moment or two, one of the eaters appeared to shrug before turning away from the scene and heading back the way he’d come. By the time, One-Eye and Lone-Hunter had walked over to join her; all the other eaters were walking away. Coming to a halt next to Shine, One-Eye examined her bloody spear head.

“I’ll need to put in a new head on that,” he informed her conversationally.

“Good kill,” Lone-Hunter announced after checking that the eater chief was really dead.

“Not bad,” Shine replied distractedly; jumbled thoughts were going through her mind, it was time for her to make a decision. “Look guys,” Shine turned to look at her friends, “I want to go back and look for Dark,” she explained. “If you rest up in the woods tonight you’ll be home by the end of tomorrow, you don’t need me.” Shine watched the expressions on the two hunters faces, they didn’t tell her much, “Look, whatever happens I’ll be back home in less than a hand of days…”

“Fair enough,” One-Eye shrugged, “you better take my spear.”

“I knew you’d want to go look for her,” Lone-Hunter grinned, “no one who made so much noise snuggling should be allowed to leave the clan!”

“What?” Shine looked up at the two men and felt the tears start to fill her eyes, “You mean you don’t mind?”

“No,” One-Eye shook his head, “look, Shine you need someone, we’ve all got someone to snuggle with and argue with and laugh with…”

“Yeah,” agreed Lone-Hunter, “now Dusk is with me you have no one to share your secrets with, no one to keep you warm.” The big hunter placed his hand on Shine’s shoulder, “If that girl Dark is your ‘one’, then so be it. You better hunt her down and bring her back.”

“Thanks guys,” Shine hugged Lone-Hunter and One-Eye in turn, “you’re great.”

Taking One-Eye’s spear, Shine started to trot back the way she’d come. Pausing she stopped and looked back to where her friends were making good progress towards the woods. Feeling her eyes upon them they turned and waved back.

“AYE! AYE! HAAA!” Shine called her hunting cry as she waved before turning away and starting her hunt.

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	8. Chapter 8

8.

Bargains.

Kneeling down by the river bank, Elm glanced around at the woods checking for danger before bending to drink. Scooping water from her hand into her mouth she drank thirstily, looking to her left she saw Cub lapping up water next to her.

“No, baby, not like that,” Elm said in a despairing voice, “only animals drink like that and you’re a person.” Frowning a little Elm moved closer to her son, “Look, honey,” she said getting the boy’s attention, “use your hand, like this.”

After demonstrating how to drink properly, Elm watched her little boy copy her.

“Good!” Elm smiled, she waited for him to finish drinking before giving him a big hug to show him how pleased she was with him. “There now go and play but don’t go too far.”

Watching as her son toddled off to play, Elm found herself frowning again. Her boy was old enough to say words but hadn’t, at least not yet. By his age children were usually capable of stringing two or three words together to get over simple ideas. They should also be able to name lots of things and remember people’s names. But Cub had never said a word, not even ‘Mama’, Elm knew that the boy understood her as he usually did what she told him to, but so far he’d not said a word himself.

Trying not to worry too much, Elm sat with her back against a tree and sighed heavily. It had been a hard few days since Shine and the guys had left to find new fire. Things had not been helped by Mother’s baby coming early and Chase moping around the cave because she missed her mate. 

The baby’s birth had been hard on Mother and the child, Elm had been worried that she’d lose both of them but she hadn’t and now the clan had a new little hunter, if he lived to grow up into one. Night-Watcher had been overjoyed by the boy’s arrival and didn’t seem to care that the child was a bit small and weak looking. Men usually liked babies to be big and strong. On the other hand, Elm, having given birth to Cub, was all in favour of smaller babies. However the child had sucked lustily enough at his mother’s breasts and now appeared to be thriving, if he lived out the next few days the clan would give him his ‘baby-name’.

Moving her skin bag onto her lap, Elm looked inside it to check on what she’d found so far today. She’d told everyone that she was going to collect some herbs and mushrooms for magic potions, the real reason was she wanted to get away from Chase’s continual whining and complaining. If the woman hadn’t been so near to giving birth herself, Elm would have asked Mother if she could beat her with a stick to make her shut-up. But she hadn’t and now she was out in the woods, by herself with just Cub for company, she didn’t want to beat anyone.

Sighing happily, Elm was just considering eating one of the mushrooms that gave her really weird dreams when she heard something. The mushroom froze half way to her mouth as her eyes roamed around the trees looking for danger. Seeing a flash of grey moving obliquely towards her, Elm relaxed.

“Hi,” she said conversationally to the big she-wolf.

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The female that the humans called Swift had been watching Elm and Cub for some time. When she hadn’t got anything better to do, like hunt or watch over her own cubs, Swift liked to watch the humans and try to puzzle out what they were doing. These days she found herself with a lot more time to spare, the lions had come and killed both her cubs. Soon she’d forget, but until then she’d taken to watching the humans more than she used to.

Trotting over to where the human that the wolves called Green-pelt rested, Swift paused to sniff the man-cub. The little human didn’t smell quite like the other humans, if Swift didn’t know better she’d say there was something of the wolf in the little creature, but that was impossible. Showing great patience, Swift allowed the man-cub to put his little arms around her neck and nuzzle the fur around her throat for a moment. Gently shaking off the cub, Swift walked cautiously over to where Green-pelt sat and lay down just out of reach of the human.

The human’s in the valley had never been frightened of the pack and had never tried to kill any of the pack’s members. Swift could just remember when the humans had first arrived, some in the pack had wanted to kill them right away. But, Swift’s mate and herself had said no. There’d been a lot of growling and fighting before the rest of the pack came into line with their way of thinking.

At first the two packs avoided each other, sometimes the humans left spare meat for the wolves. They had left the dead of the pack that had attacked their cave for the wolves. Strangely the humans hadn’t touched any of the meat and there’d been a lot to spare. Some things the humans did, Swift would never understand. In return for the gifts of meat, the wolves would often warn the humans of danger. Having watched the humans for a long time, Swift had worked out that the human’s could see very well, but only had poor senses of smell and hearing, the poor things often walked into danger that the wolves could smell from the other end of the valley.

Resting her head on her forepaws, Swift looked at Green-pelt. The female was making calming noises with her mouth; this was something else the humans did more than even wolves. The noises Green-pelt made caused odd pictures to form in Swift’s mind; she could see the humans and the wolves hunting together. First they hunted down the lions that threatened both of the packs. Next Swift saw the wolves and humans hunting game; the humans with their clever plans and sharp weapons, the wolves with their sharp sense of smell and keen hearing. In her mind’s eye, Swift saw the humans and wolves sharing the meat from the hunt, she saw a future where the wolves and humans helped and protected each other and things were better.

However, the next thing Swift saw in her mind made the other things she’d seen seem unimportant, she saw and felt fire! Whimpering with pleasure, Swift rolled onto her side and stretched, she could almost feel the warmth coming off the dancing flames, this was almost better than curling up next to her mate as the snow fell outside the lair. Suddenly the warmth of the fire had gone and Swift felt the chill of a late afternoon on her thick fur coat, she whined a little missing the warmth of the pretty flames.

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“So you’ll think about it, huh?” Elm said as she collected up a sleepy Cub and stood up; the she-wolf looked up at her with unblinking eyes. “Of course,” Elm told the wolf, “we haven’t got the fire yet, but soon, and when we do you’re welcome to share it, like I said.”

Getting up, Swift gave Green-pelt one last hard look trying to see into the human’s mind to see if there was any falsehood in her words and thoughts; the wolf could see none. Turning away Swift trotted off into the woods, what the human had shown her would take a lot of thinking about.

Watching the wolf leave, Elm cuddled her son and shrugged her shoulders, she was sure she’d got through to the wolf and she thought that the idea of the fire she’d put into the wolf’s mind had clinched the deal and that was what it was, a bargain. Working together the two clans would find it easier to survive the winter. Looking up through the bare tree tops, Elm saw the low, dark threatening clouds, she sniffed the wind that blew between the trees like an icy cold spirit. It would snow tonight, a few days more and the river would go hard in the night. If the hunters didn’t get home with the replacement fire, it wouldn’t matter if they became allies with the wolves, they’d all be dead come spring.

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Back tracking to the boulder where they’d camped for two days was easy and Shine made good progress. Resting at the old campsite she walked down to the little stream and drank, seeing a fish come too close to her she snatched it out of the water and ate it. As long as she ate only the white flesh she knew she wouldn’t get ill or have weird dreams.

Satisfied with her meal, Shine climbed up the river bank to the old camp. Quickly finding Dark’s trail she started to run across the grass covered hills. At the top of each rise she paused to look, searching for any signs of human activity, Dark must be going somewhere so it stood to reason that Shine would see sign long before she came to any inhabited caves.

The land she ran through was very much like the plain where her tribe spent the summer, but it was more up and down than the grasslands she knew. The animals here were different too. On the plains there were bison, mammoth and big deer. Here the deer were a lot smaller and there were no bison or mammoths. There were, however, fleet footed herds of animals that looked like deer but didn’t have antlers and of course there were bad tempered boars like the ones that lived in the woods near her winter home. You had to be very lucky and very brave to kill a boar. In fact Shine was the only hunter in her tribe that had managed the feat in many winters.

While she’d been thinking these thoughts, Shine had climbed to the top of yet another low hill. Stopping she checked that she was still on Dark’s trail, she was; Dark had obviously not been trying to hide her trail and she’d left plenty of sign for Shine to follow. Confidant that she’d find her friend again, Shine looked up and around. The great expanse of water seemed to jump out of the landscape at her and made her cry out in surprise. There had to be more water there than she’d ever seen before in her life.

Of course she’d heard stories about a great expanse of water somewhere far to the north, and she’d seen lakes. But this was so much bigger than a lake, it seemed to stretch out to the horizon, Shine had never thought it possible that there could be that much water in the entire world and it was so pretty. It was blue and the sun sparkled off its surface making pretty patterns on her eyes. For a long time Shine gazed at this thing of wonder and smiled like a child that had been given a new bone to gnaw.

Shaking her head, Shine remembered why she was where she was. Taking a firm hold on One-Eye’s spear she started to run again down the hill into the little valley and up the other side. Every time she came to the top of a hill the great lake, as she now called it in her head, was that little bit closer. Coming to the top of a slightly higher hill, Shine stopped to look. By now the lake was a lot closer and she could see a wide band of trees that separated the grasslands from the lake. Her eyes were drawn by movement on the lake shore.

Crying out in joy, Shine did a little victory dance; there was smoke and only people made fire and made smoke. This must be where Dark lived; a frown crossed Shine’s face as she stopped dancing. As hard as she looked she couldn’t see anywhere that might have caves. The thought puzzled her and frightened her a little. On the plains the tribe set up camp under the trees that grew by the rivers, they only lived in caves during the winter. Did this mean that Dark’s people lived under the trees all year round? How strange, Shine told herself as she ran down the side of the hill and towards the trees that surrounded the great lake.

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Glancing up at the sun as she jogged along, Shine saw that it was about mid afternoon; it would be best if she came on Dark’s people while there was still plenty of light. If she arrived at the camp, or whatever it was she’d spend a night in a tree before approaching Dark’s people, after all, Shine wanted to be friends and not frighten anybody.

Coming to the trees, Shine moved along the edge of the woods until she came to a game trail that appeared to be going in the right direction. Smiling at the thought that she might see Dark again soon and maybe they could snuggle again like they had around the camp fire, Shine ran along the trail perhaps not paying as much attention to things as she should have.

In her defence it has to be said that Shine’s people didn’t dig traps, so, the chances were that even if she’d noticed the disturbed earth she wouldn’t have realised what it warned her of. Her heel came down on the soft earth and the ground beneath her seemed to open up and swallow her whole like some great hunting cat. Screaming in shock and fear, Shine fell, her arms and legs frantically searching for some purchase on thin air. The last thing she remembered before the world turned black was the ground rushing up to meet her.

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Pulling her furs more tightly around herself Elm felt her teeth start to chatter, it had got very cold very quickly. Glancing up at the tree tops she saw the first snow flakes make their way through the skeletal branches to land on the leaf litter of the forest floor. It was still daylight, just, and it felt colder than it had the previous night. Moaning deep in her throat, Elm quickened her step as she looked down to check on her son. He looked snug enough curled up in her arms his head resting on her shoulder. For a moment Elm wished she was little again and could curl up in her mother’s arms under her skins, but she couldn’t, her mother was long dead and so would she be if she didn’t get back to the cave.

Of course it wouldn’t be much warmer there but at least everyone could snuggle together for warmth. However, if they didn’t get a fire soon, even snuggling together they’d lose Mother and her new baby. If mother died and her child joined her beyond the skies that would be the end of the clan even if they lived through the winter. Coldly Elm made her assessment of who would live and who would die. Night-Watcher would die, he was older even than Mother and if he lost his mate…well, Elm had seen it happen before. Chase and her baby would die, the cold and hunger would kill them. Dusk would survive, she was young and strong and didn’t have a child to sap her strength. Also she could snuggle with Wolf-Moon and herself. Looking at Cub she knew he’d survive as long as she did, but the clan would have died.

Hearing a sound off to her right, Elm saw a grey shape trotting along parallel to her. It was the young male, Black-ear, Elm smiled her thanks. Obviously Swift had sent him to watch over her as she made her way home. Suddenly the wolf stopped and crouched down searching between the tress for some hidden danger, he’d sensed something Elm hadn’t. Crouching down by a tree, Elm watched as the wolf’s lips pulled back to expose his teeth. Wolves were brave and wouldn’t desert a pack mate in trouble, it remained to be seen whether Black-ear considered Elm a pack-mate or not.

Hearing none too stealthy foot falls off in the trees, Elm made herself as small as she could and started to mutter the spell that would make her hidden. Fading from sight she started to look like part of the tree that she was hiding behind as the foot steps got louder. Hearing the low growl of the wolf, Elm hoped that Cub wouldn’t take that moment to wake up and announced to the world that he was hungry. Suddenly, Elm realised that Black-ear had stopped growling, taking a chance she looked over to where she’d last seen the wolf only to see him trot off into the trees.

“Oh no,” Elm moaned miserably knowing that she was going to be a meal for something very soon.

Listening hard, Elm heard the footsteps clearly now, whatever it was wasn’t making much effort to hide itself. Thinking that if she reappeared when it was close and sprang to her feet making lots of noise she might be able to startle whatever it was and escape before it regained its wits. Judging that the beast was as close as she wanted it to be, Elm jumped to her feet and yelled as loudly as she could.

“AAAAAAAAGH!” Elm screamed making Cub wake up and start to yell and complain too.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!” Cried One-Eye and Lone-Hunter as Elm appeared from nowhere right in front of them.

The two big tough hunters nearly wet themselves before they realised that it wasn’t some big scary monster out to eat them. It was only Elm who was just as frightened as they were. Dancing for joy the three adults hugged each other, realising that there was nothing to be frightened of, Cub stopped crying and yelling and started to laugh at the antics of the adults.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you,” Elm cried breathlessly, “but did you get the fire?”

“Yes!” One-Eye held up his fire-carrier and Elm looked in at the bright embers that nestled in a bed of moss and dry grass.

“Great!” Elm hugged everyone again only then noticing that someone was missing, “Where’s Shine? She’s not…”

“No!” Lone-Hunter reassured her, “As far we know she’s okay, she had to go on a journey by herself, she’ll be home soon.”

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	9. Chapter 9

9.

Fights, Meetings and Plans.

Awaking, Shine found herself on the floor of a small round cave. Sitting up, she rubbed the back of her head and felt a large lump under her fingers; she winced a little and quickly moved her hand away from the spot. Looking at her hand in the half light of the cave she sighed with relief when she saw there was no blood. These last few days had been really quite hard on her, or so she told herself; chased by lions, bitten by a Big-Nasty, being really sick and finally falling into a hole that hadn’t been there. Just at the moment life sucked. The only good thing to have happened to her so far was meeting Dark and even she had gone away.

The desperate need to pee, made Shine look around the cave. This was weird, she told herself, there didn’t appear to be a way in or out, also it didn’t _feel_ like a cave. It was about a Shine tall at its highest point and maybe a Shine and a half across. The walls seemed to be made out of sticks twisted together like her own people twisted together rushes to make baskets, only a lot bigger. The sticks were covered in skins. All this was quite out of Shine’s experience and it made her head hurt when she tried to work out why any one would want to put her in a large upside-down basket in a cave. Whatever, all this wondering and puzzling didn’t help her find a way out and she still needed to pee.

Moaning in distress, Shine dug a hole with her hand and peed into it. You weren’t supposed to pee inside the cave, this was a law in her own tribe. But, if you had caves that you couldn’t get out of what did people expect you to do? After crouching over her little hole, Shine examined herself between her legs where she’d been bitten. Apart from some dried blood, some white marks where the Big-Nasty had bitten her and the remains of Dark’s healing magic, everything looked as it should be down there. Smiling with relief, Shine pushed down her dress and filled in the hole. Now to find her way out of this puzzle, she told herself.

Crawling around the ‘cave’, Shine’s mind told her there must be an exit. After-all how had she got in here? It couldn’t be magic because no magic was powerful enough to move people trough solid stone. Having her back to the man, Shine didn’t see him come in so didn’t see how he managed this piece of magic. Looking over her shoulder, Shine nearly cried out in fear. Like Dark, the man was naked and his body was completely covered in paint. Unlike Dark who’d been painted to make her harder to see the man was painted in bright colours making him very easy to see. All this, Shine wouldn’t have minded; in her own tribe on special occasions they painted their bodies with magic patterns. But, what made Shine gasp so loudly was the frightening thing the man wore over his head and the fact that his man-thing was hard and sticking out from his body.

Stunned by the man’s sudden and strange appearance, plus the size of his man-thing, Shine didn’t move or try to protect herself as the man knelt between her legs and pulled her hips towards his man-thing. It was fairly obvious that the man wanted to snuggle her, but not in a nice way.

“NO!” Shine yelled at the man expecting him to back off; but he didn’t.

Much to Shine’s surprise the man persisted, in fact he managed to slip his man-thing into her girl-place despite her wriggling and complaining. Once again Shine was puzzled, shocked and frightened. No hunter in her own tribe would be so unscrupulous as to continue to snuggle a girl after she’d said she didn’t want to! Kneeling on her hands and knees, Shine felt the man push his man-thing deeper inside her and to make matters worse the man didn’t seem to care that Shine wasn’t enjoying herself.

Deciding that she’d had enough of this, Shine twisted around and hit the man across the jaw with her fist. The man cried out in hurt and surprise; the force of the blow knocking him across the floor of the cave and making his man-thing slip from her girl-place. Now free of the nasty man, Shine jumped to her feet and turned to face him, she growled warningly deep in her throat as she stood over the man and watched his man-thing shrink to its normal size. The man jabbered at her making the same sorts of sounds that Dark had before Shine had started to teach her to speak properly. Climbing to his feet he continued to jabber and point at Shine; she got the impression that he thought she’d done something wrong. He seemed to want Shine to get back down on her hands and knees so he could finish snuggling her.

“NO!” Shine shouted again, this time taking a threatening step towards the man.

The man appeared to ignore her threat display as he closed the distance between them and grabbed hold of her shoulders. He tried to force her to turn around and get back down onto her hands and knees again.

“NO!” Shine shouted into his face for the third and final time.

In her own tribe a hunter wasn’t supposed to snuggle with a girl if she didn’t want to, but sometimes, like after a successful hunt the hunting magic wouldn’t have left a hunter or he’d be possessed by the spirit of the animal he’d killed. In these situations a hunter might try to force himself on a girl. If the girl said ‘No’ loudly three times and the hunter persisted she must use her own special magic to put him off any thoughts he might have entertained about snuggling. Bringing her knee in to swift and violent contact with the man’s man-thing, Shine stood back as he groaned softly and collapsed on to the floor as he clutched between his legs.

“Serves you right,” Shine told the man as she bent over him.

Her intention was to throw him out of the cave, but there were two problems; first Shine still didn’t know where ‘out’ was and second, the man wore no skins that she could easily grab hold of. Momentarily at a loss at what to do, Shine shrugged resignedly before grabbing the man by his hair and his man-thing. Lifting the man up, she saw his face covering fall to one side to expose an ordinary face screwed up in pain. Only meaning to throw the man at the cave wall, Shine was most surprised to see part of the wall move and the man disappear through it. Thinking quickly, she followed the man out through the hole and found herself outside.

Two things came as big surprises as Shine stumbled out into the daylight. First she’d not been in a cave, she’d been in some sort of shelter made out of skins and wood that wasn’t a cave at all! Secondly she found herself surrounded by a whole hunting party of painted and face covered men, each of whom clutched long efficient looking spears that were all pointing at Shine.

“Oh dear,” Shine muttered to herself.

0=0=0=0

The fire burnt brightly at the mouth of the cave as the clan relaxed around it sitting or lying on skins and furs. Although the night air had a cold bite to it the cave dwellers were comfortable enough, they’d eaten well and as a result they were full and contented. Now they had their fire back and the hunters had returned they stood a good chance of surviving the winter, as long as there was game enough no one need die and the babies would live long enough to see spring and the warm days that followed.

“While we’re all here,” Mother said from her seat by the fire, “I think its time we decided what needs to be done.”

There were mutterings of agreement from the people around the fire.

“First,” Mother’s voice got stronger as she spoke, “tomorrow morning, Lone-Hunter, One-Eye and Night-Watcher must go hunting and bring back enough meat to be smoked and dried while there’s still time…”

“W-what?” Dusk pushed herself up onto an elbow; she’d been lying on a soft fur in Lone-Hunter’s arms. “I-I thought Lone-Hunter was going to go look for Shine.”

“There’s no time for that, dear,” Mother replied reasonably, “It’ll snow hard in the next few days so we must collect as much food as we can for when we can’t leave the cave. Talking of which there’s plenty of things that need doing around the cave and there’s fire wood that needs collecting…”

While they’d had no fire the clan had fallen into a lethargy that prevented them from doing the things that needed to be done to prepare for winter. Now the fire was back things would be better, people were moving about again doing all the things that needed to be done. However the clan’s survival was not assured, they’d all have to work hard and this was no time for their best hunter to be going off searching for wayward girls who should have come home with everyone else.

“But Mom!” Dusk was sitting up now and staring at her mother, “This is Shine we’re talking about, if it wasn’t for her we wouldn’t have the fire in the first place!”

“Agreed,” Mother nodded, “But she should have come home instead of traipsing off after mysterious, dark haired girls.”

“Mother,” Lone-Hunter spoke up to support his mate, he also felt he should at least try to find Shine, “I’d only be gone two days, three at most…

“NO!” Mother replied angrily, “I have spoken and its been decided, no one will look for Shine, she’ll come home or not as the Great Mother decides.” Mother glared at all the members of the clan one at a time making sure they all understood.

“Well, I think, Mother’s right,” Chase spoke up from where she sat next to One-Eye, “Shine’s always thinking of herself wandering off leaving the rest of us to face who knows what.”

Lying back in her mate’s arms, Dusk sneered at Chase and then sniggered. By the look on One-Eye’s face even if Chase hadn’t been heavy with a baby he’d not be snuggling her tonight. Chase forgot that One-Eye had known Shine for longer than he’d been One-Eye and although he loved his mate, Shine still had a hold on his heart that was stronger than any hold Chase might have on it.

Looking over at her mother through the fire, Dusk sighed, there’d be no arguing with her now she’d made up her mind, but… But if Dusk wanted to be Mother of All one day, she would have to learn to make hard decisions. It would be for her to decide what was best for not only her clan but the entire tribe. One of the things that helped to ensure the tribe’s continued survival was Shine. Her sister was the fastest runner, the best with a spear or any other weapon, she was stronger and braver than any hunter. Alright, some times other people were better at some things than Shine was, Dusk lay back against her mate and thought proudly that her mate was a better tracker than Shine. But, life was easier with Shine than without her, Mother was being short sighted not sending Lone-Hunter after her sister.

Once the meeting broke up and everyone had gone back to their places in the cave, Dusk arranged the sleeping skins for herself and Lone-Hunter. When all was ready she slipped off her dress and quickly burrowed into the pile of furs she shared with Lone-Hunter. After they’d snuggled a couple of times, Dusk lay in Lone-Hunter’s arms.

“You feel bad about not going after Shine don’t you?” Dusk asked her mate quietly.

“Yeah,” Lone-Hunter said into her hair, “its not right that no one at least tries to look for her.”

“I agree,” Dusk nodded her head, “but, who’s to say that when you go hunting tomorrow you don’t get a little lost and find yourself heading in the same direction you went with Shine and One-Eye?”

Lone-Hunter raised his head to look down at his mate.

“If Mother was to find out I’d…”

“What’s she going to find out?” Dusk asked softly, “That you got turned around? Even the best hunters get lost once in a while. Remember Long-Fingers? He got lost and didn’t get home for days.”

“Hmm,” Lone-Hunter said as he turned the idea over in his mind, “I’ll give it some thought.”

“You want to snuggle again?” Dusk asked as she rolled over to face her mate.

“You’re sneaky, you know that, don’t you?” Lone-Hunter chuckled as he rolled on top of Dusk.

“Sneaky? Me? Never!” Dusk giggled as she felt Lone-Hunter’s man-thing slide into her girl-place.

0=0=0=0

A pile of furs down from where Lone-Hunter and Dusk were busy snuggling (for the third or forth time that night), Elm sighed contentedly as she snuggled up against the soft fur of her mate’s chest.

“You know,” Elm said sleepily, “you’re not actually bound to obey what Mother says?”

Moon-Wolf whined softly, he might only be a man three days a moon but he was far from stupid, he knew exactly what his mate was going to suggest.

“I mean no one would think it strange if you just wandered off,” Elm pointed out, “and just happened to come back with Shine…”

Moon-Wolf sighed, okay, he seemed to say his words appearing in Elm’s mind.

“Good,” Elm smiled thinking what a clever little wise-woman she was, “y’wanna snuggle?” She asked rolling onto her tummy and pushing her bottom up slightly.

Mounting his mate, Moon-Wolf knew he was being led like a silly cub, but Shine was his friend and she deserved more than being left to an uncertain fate. Elm howled with pleasure as the wolf entered her.

0=0=0=0

Groaning, Shine lay on her side on the floor of the skin-wood-cave, she ached in places she’d not realised she’d had places to ache. The fight, while not particularly hard had been a long one and her opponents had weapons while she had not, at least not at first. Stumbling from the skin-wood-cave (Shine promised herself to think of a better word for it later) she found herself face to face with a whole bunch of brightly painted and face covered men. By the way they all had their man-things out and the way that most of them looked hard, Shine got the distinct impression that they were all expecting to snuggle her. They’d certainly not been happy when she’d objected to the idea.

In her tribe a girl or woman only snuggled with her mate and the same went for men. They only snuggled with their own mates, at least that was what was supposed to happen, and it generally cut down on the fights between males over who’d snuggled who’s mate and so on. Snuggling between girls was different and didn’t count as proper snuggling like if two boys snuggled. However, one girl snuggling with lots of men was so taboo that Shine almost fainted at the very thought of it.

After a lot of shouting, most of which had been directed at Shine, the men of the painted tribe tried to push her back into the skin-wood-cave. When Shine didn’t want to go they tried to make her.

Her step-father, Night-Watcher had always told her that as she was so much stronger than even the strongest hunter she shouldn’t use her strength to fight other people. However this wasn’t always possible and he’d said that in certain situations it was alright for her to use her strength to protect herself. This looked to Shine as if it was one of those occasions. At first she’d just tried to push the men away, but they kept coming back, grabbing for her body and touching her in places that only her mate should touch her. This made her angry and she started to hit people.

Eventually the minor scuffle had turned into a full blown battle, Shine against the entire village. The result was a foregone conclusion, Shine won. After chasing the last painted person from the collection of skin-wood-caves (there was another word that needed thinking up), Shine had gone back to the skin-wood-cave were she’d woken up to lick her wounds, in a couple of cases literally.

Lying on the bare floor, Shine moaned uncomfortably. There were no furs or skins to lie on and all the fighting had made her hungry and thirsty. Pushing herself up into a sitting position, Shine resigned herself to having to look for food and water before she could rest. Just as she was crawling towards the opening in the wall of the skin-wood-cave, the piece of skin covering the opening moved to one side to reveal Dark.

“DARK!” Shine cried happily.

“SHINE!” Dark crawled eagerly into the skin-wood-cave and hugged her tightly.

“Oooooh!” Shine groaned as Dark’s strong arms reminded her of all the places she hurt.

“Shine hurt?” Dark let go of Shine as if she’d suddenly turned to fire.

“Yes,” Shine didn’t know whether to laugh or cry so she did both, “Shine hurt.”

“Shine hurt,” Dark wrapped her arms around Shine and hugged her again only more gently this time, “Shine, Dark snuggle?”

“Not just now if that’s alright with you,” Shine replied as she drew strength and comfort from the touch of the other girl’s body. “Maybe later.”

“Shine hurt,” Dark repeated apparently understanding why Shine didn’t want to snuggle, “Dark make Shine good.”

Watching as Dark crawled out of the skin-wood-cave, Shine sat cross legged on the floor.

“Well there’s a piece of luck,” she told herself, “Dark remembers me and remembers the words I taught her…things are looking up.”

0=0=0=0

Standing at the edge of the wood, Lone hunter looked into the thicker trees of the forest and started to doubt his decision to go look for Shine. At first light he’d started from the cave with One-Eye and Night-Hunter. Once away from the cave he’d easily lost the two men in the trees and doubled back to follow the path they’d taken when they’d gone to look for fire. 

Now he leaned against a tree and contemplated how much trouble he was going to be in whatever he decided to do. If he went home now, Dusk would be very angry at him; she might be small and pretty and really good to snuggle with, but she was also very determined and she loved her sister very much. If he were to go home to her without at least looking for Shine, Dusk wouldn’t let him snuggle her for many moons. However, if he stayed away from the cave, Mother would be cross at him for disobeying her and looking for Shine. He really didn’t know which was worse, the wrath of his mate or the wrath of Mother. Hearing a noise behind him, Lone-Hunter turned to find Moon-Wolf standing a couple of paces away from him.

“You too?” Lone-Hunter asked as he looked into Moon-Wolf’s big amber eyes.

Whining like a cub, Moon-Wolf gave Lone-Hunter a very hang-wolf look, it was shameful how his mate could lead him around like a cub.

“Yeah, buddy I know what you mean,” Lone-Hunter sighed, “come on we need to be through the forest before night fall.”

0=0=0=0


	10. Chapter 10

10.

Journeys.

Whimpering loudly, Dusk scrambled across the cave floor to hide behind Elm; Mother was angry and was taking out her frustrations on the younger woman. Striding across the cave, Mother raised her hand to strike as Dusk cried out in alarm from behind Elm. Drawing back her lips and baring her teeth, Elm snarled at Mother warning her to back off.

“What y’gonna do?” growled Elm, “Hit me too?”

Backing off a little, Mother calmed down, she knew how foolish it would be to hit the clan’s Wise Woman.

“What is your problem, Mother?” Elm asked in a softer tone; Elm knew exactly what was bothering mother, Lone-Hunter had disobeyed her and she thought that Dusk was the reason behind Lone-Hunter’s actions. “Go and calm down until you can act like a civilised person.”

“Yes,” Mother took a deep calming breath, “of course you’re right,” Mother looked at Dusk, “I’m sorry Duskie but I’m…”

Not able to find the right words, Mother turned, walked over to her sleeping place, picked up her new-born and headed towards the cave mouth.

“I’m going to sit by the river for a while,” Mother announced, “I won’t be long.”

With that, Mother headed on out of the cave and down towards the river. Putting down the skins she’d been sewing together, Elm turned to Dusk and gave her a comforting hug.

“Don’t mind your mom,” Elm explained as she rocked Dusk in her arms, “it’s been a tough few days for her, what with the fire going out and her baby coming early and the beast-men and the lions…”

“I know,” Dusk admitted tearfully, “and maybe I did get Lone-Hunter to go off and look for Shine, but…”

“I know,” Elm nodded her head sagely, “you couldn’t let your sister be lost and alone, where do you think, Moon-Wolf is, huh?”

“You mean?” Dusk wiped away her tears and smiled.

“Men and Wolves are easy to control,” Elm smirked, “Wolf-Men doubly so!”

This time Dusk laughed out loud.

“And,” Elm pointed out, “it’s not as if One-Eye and Night-Watcher aren’t doing a good job of bringing home the meat.”

The two men had been doing a surprisingly good job of hunting. Being, probably, the two cleverest men in the tribe, they’d both worked out that they were terrible hunters without someone like Lone-Hunter to tell them what to do. So they’d worked out a way of hunting without having to use any of the magic that a hunter would normally find essential. Instead of chasing after the prey they lay in wait somewhere where they knew animals would pass by, like near the river. Then they’d ambush them at close range (due to Night-Hunter’s weak eyes) throwing spears and using One-Eye’s new rock thrower. They’d been so successful that the clan now had so much meat they might not be able to preserve it all before the snow really hit hard.

“No,” Elm sighed sadly, “Mother’s just a little bit sad at the moment. Some women get like that after they’ve had a baby.”

“Did you?” Dusk asked her friend.

“No,” Elm shook her head, “but that’s me.”

“I hope I don’t get like that when I have babies,” Dusk replied quietly as she looked out the cave entrance where her mother had gone.

“Well, we’ll have to wait and see,” Elm grinned, “and by the way you and Lone-Hunter have been snuggling I don’t think we’ll need to wait long.” Watching as Dusk turned a pretty shade of pink, Elm nodded to herself; come late summer the clan would have another little hunter or gatherer. “In the mean time,” Elm picked up the skins she’d been making into a winter coat, “these skins won’t sew themselves into coats…”

0=0=0=0

“These skins aren’t very good,” Shine explained, “but they’ll have to do.”

Although Dark’s people could make ‘huts’; a clever idea that Shine’s people had never thought of (it would make living on the plains easier if they had somewhere to shelter from the rain) they weren’t very good at curing skins. It was probably because they didn’t wear clothes like proper people did. Casting a glance at Dark’s body, Shine smiled; it was all she could do to stop herself from leaping on her new friend and giving her a good snuggling. But instead of snuggling like a burrow dweller, Shine continued to cut up the skin and tie it together to make Dark a dress.

Looking down at her new clothes, Dark whined and picked at the skins. It felt strange to have something other than paint covering her body and the skins smelt bad, not like Shine’s which just smelt of Shine. But it had been fun getting the paint off her body, so much fun in fact that they’d ended up snuggling in the water which had been a new experience for both of them. However the fun had had to stop because Dark’s people were getting over their fear of Shine and were creeping back to the village. Grabbing weapons, food and some spare skins the two young women had left the village of the painted people and had started to trot towards the mountains.

Hardly pausing as she left the village, the one place that Dark had known all her life, the young woman hadn’t looked back. Somehow she knew her life would be different, better with Shine’s people up in the mountains. From what she learned, Dark was surprised to find that no one would beat her or make her work from sun up to sun down while still expecting her to fight the things that came out of the water. The most amazing thing, at least to Dark’s mind, was that she’d be given her far share of food even if she hadn’t hunted it or trapped it herself! It would all be very odd at first, Dark knew, but with Shine to show her the way she was sure she’d fit in; she wouldn’t mind fighting if it was to protect people who loved her and Shine did love her, she showed that every time they snuggled.

But, Dark wasn’t sure she liked the idea of these clothes that Shine said she needed to wear. Okay, so Shine had tried to explain about these things called, ‘cold’ and ‘snow’ and this thing about water going hard was totally unbelievable! Somehow, Dark was sure she’d misunderstood Shine’s words. Although she was picking up Shine’s language quickly, Dark knew she was clever, just like Shine; there were things that she didn’t understand. Perhaps she’d understand when she saw what Shine was talking about.

0=0=0=0

“There!” Shine held up the skins to Dark and smiled the fire light reflecting in her eyes.

“What these?” Dark sniffed at the skins suspiciously, they smelt like long dead meat.

“Leggings,” Shine replied helpfully to Dark’s disbelieving face.

“Shine want Dark to wear more skin and smell like dead animal?” Dark asked uncertainly.

“Erm, not so much,” Shine admitted, “but they’ll keep you warm when we get to the forest and on up into the valley.”

“Dark no believe in ‘cold’,” Dark sulked as she crossed her arms over her breasts.

“If you don’t believe in cold why do you sit so near the fire?” Shine wanted to know.

“Because Shine near fire,” Dark replied as if Shine was a particularly stupid child.

“Oh!” Shine smiled in the fire light, “Then maybe we should sit closer, huh?”

“Closer good,” Dark admitted as the two young women moved closer together, “Shine pretty, Dark pretty too?”

“Dark very pretty,” Shine murmured as she moved her head into lip-nuzzling range of the other girl.

“Shine smell good,” Dark’s hands started to roam over Shine’s body.

“Dark smell good, too,” Shine panted as she caressed Dark’s breast.

“Even with bad smell skins on?” Dark asked with a giggle that made Shine giggle too.

“Yes!” Shine pushed Dark down onto her back, “Even with bad smell skins on!”

Giggling and making snuffling noises that quickly turned into moaning and groaning noises, Shine and Dark got down to some serious snuggling next to the fire.

0=0=0=0

After snuggling and going to the happy-place four or five times together, Shine and Dark separated and rolled onto their backs as they lay side by side; Dark shivered as the cold night air touched her body.

“That’s cold,” Shine explained as she sat up to put more wood on their fire.

“Hello,” said a male voice from the other side of the fire.

“AAAAAGH!” Screamed Shine.

“AAAAAGH!” Screamed Dark as the two young women clutched at each other like two frightened children instead of the strong hunters that they both were.

“We thought you were going to spend all night snuggling,” Lone-Hunter grinned.

Yawning widely and whining a little, Moon-Wolf agreed as he laid his head on his forepaws and gazed into the fire.

“WOLF!” Cried Dark as she frantically searched for a weapon.

“That’s not a wolf,” Shine explained trying to calm the woman who she was increasingly thinking of as her mate.

“Not wolf?” Dark eyed Moon-Wolf uncertainly; he certainly looked like a wolf to her and a particularly big wolf too.

“That’s Moon-Wolf,” Shine said as Dark started to relax a little, “he’s not a wolf really, sometimes he’s a man…but I prefer him as a wolf.”

“Wolf?” Dark frowned, “Man?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Shine admitted, “but he’s one of my…” Shine hesitated for half a breath, “…well, I suppose he’s one of your clan now too.”

Dark made an uncertain moaning noise in the back of her throat.

“Whatever,” Shine shrugged; there were lots of things that she’d need to explain to Dark, in the mean time she turned to look at Lone-Hunter. “So where did you spring from?”

“Saw your fire,” Lone-Hunter explained, “so we came to look, we heard you and Dark from way down yonder,” Lone-Hunter pointed back down trail. “Dusk persuaded me to come look for you, not that I needed much persuading sister mine, but it was fun letting her persuade me.”

“Ha! Men!” Shine barked.

“Seems the same thing happened to Moon-Wolf,” Lone-Hunter added.

“What?” Shine grinned as she watched Dark crawl over and gingerly touch Moon-Wolf’s fur, “You mean Dusk snuggled Moon-Wolf to get him to come look for me?” By now Moon-Wolf was lying on his back and Dark was tickling his tummy, “That’s very open-minded of you.”

“No!” Lone-Hunter laughed, “Elm ‘persuaded’ him, although like me he didn’t really need much persuading.”

“But he still let her ‘persuade’ him?” Shine frowned for a moment; Dark and Moon-Wolf where now giggling and ‘yipping’ as they wrestled good-naturedly on the ground next to the fire. “Hey you two!” Shine called, “Remember you’ve both got mates.”

Chastened, Moon-Wolf stopped having fun and sat by the fire again while Dark crawled back over to sit next to Shine.

“Shine, Dark mates?” Dark asked slightly puzzled.

“Uh-huh,” Shine nodded, “If you want to…”

“Dark want to,” Dark admitted but the puzzled look was still on her face, in fact it got deeper. “Dark girl, Shine girl, yes?”

“Well, duh!” Shine smiled into Dark’s eyes, “like yeah we’re both totally girls silly!”

“If Dark girl and Shine girl,” Dark repeated, “where Dark-Shine get babies?”

“You want babies?” Shine asked; Dark gave a non-committal shrug, Shine wanted babies she wanted to be normal but if she mated with Dark then she wouldn’t be able to have babies. After a moment or two Shine shrugged, “We’ll totally think of something.”

“So, you’re mates?” Lone-Hunter asked.

“Looks like,” Shine agreed, “you got a problem with that?”

“Why should I?” Lone-Hunter shrugged, “I’ve never seen it before but I know girls snuggle so why shouldn’t they mate?”

“That’s very progressive of you, Lone-Hunter,” Shine liked having the big hunter as a brother, he had hidden depths and he made Dusk happy.

“I try my best,” Lone-Hunter shrugged under his cloak, “but I don’t think Mother will be so pleased.”

“You don’t?” Shine asked uncertainly.

“No, but we’ll persuade her,” Lone-Hunter began to unroll his sleeping skins and place them near the fire. “Now, we still have a long journey tomorrow.”

“Yes we do,” Shine agreed; looking around she saw that Dark was already huddled under their sleeping skins, “tomorrow night we’ll camp at the edge of the forest.”

“And the day after we should get home,” Lone-Hunter covered himself with his skins; Moon-Wolf had already curled up into a big furry ball, a thought suddenly sprung into Lone-Hunter’s mind. “Hey,” he sat up, “how’d you light a fire?”

“Magic,” Shine explained, “Dark did something with some pieces of wood and a long bit of leather thong, she says it’s real easy and she can show everyone how to do it.”

“Wow!” Lone-Hunter lay back down; something like fire-magic could be a way to get Mother to let Shine and Dark stay mates.

0=0=0=0

Just after first light the following morning the three hunters and the man-wolf started out at a steady jog for the forest and eventually home. Like wolves, men could keep a steady pace and run all day if needs be. As all three human’s were fit and well fed they didn’t find it difficult to keep pace with Moon-Wolf. As the sun was climbing towards midday, Shine was beginning to think that they’d be able to camp well inside the forest tonight and with a fire they wouldn’t have to nest in a tree. If they continued to make such good progress they’d get home not long after midday the following day. The only shadow on Shine’s horizon was the prospect of explaining why she’d gone back for Dark and why she wanted Dark as her mate.

The things Lone-Hunter had said about Mother not wanting him to search for Shine worried her too. In one way she could understand why Mother wanted Lone-Hunter to stay with the clan and not go chasing after her. In another way she was surprised that Mother hadn’t at least sent Moon-Wolf to look for her, after all she was Mother’s blood-daughter. Perhaps, thought Shine, it was the weight of the responsibility of leading the clan what with the new baby and everything, plus Mother wasn’t young anymore. Elm had had to warn Night-Watcher not to put anymore babies into Mother, Elm was convinced that another baby would kill Mother and no one wanted that to happen…well, maybe Chase but she was odd. Lost in all these dark thoughts, Shine didn’t notice the beast-men until Lone-Hunter pulled her to a halt.

“W-what?” Shine looked around first at Lone-Hunter and then back to where the beast-man tribe blocked their path, “Oh no not again!?”

It looked like the beast-men had chosen yet another Big-Nasty and were looking for a fight.

“I can’t be bothering with this,” Shine placed her hands on her hips and scowled at the beast-men.

Not only could Shine ‘not be bothering with this’ but she’d lost One-Eye’s borrowed spear. Dark’s people didn’t seem to make very good spears by the standards on her own tribe. The Village People’s spears were light and their spear points were thin and easily broken. Not the sort of weapons you wanted to use against beast-men who were all big and heavily muscled and covered in thick shaggy hair. Now with her old spear, Shine was confident she could kill any beast-man even their Big-Nasty, after all she’d done it before and this time she wouldn’t get bitten.

The beast-men had spread out and were shouting and gesturing with their weapons; Dark was shouting back in her own language and making what Shine thought must be insulting gestures at the beast-man eaters.

“What do we do?” Lone-Hunter asked as he grasped his spear tightly.

“Can we go ‘round?” Shine asked.

“There’s too many of them,” Lone-Hunter pointed out, “they’d just shift their people and we won’t be able to get round.”

“So,” Shine spat on the ground angrily, “we’ll have to fight, I’ll go kill their Big-Nasty, you an’ Dark watch my back.”

A loud growl came from down by Shine’s hip.

“Sorry, Moon-Wolf!” Shine patted the wolf’s shoulder, “of course I want you to watch my back too.”

“Hey!” Lone-Hunter drew Shine’s attention to where Dark was shouting angrily at the Big-Nasty as she walked towards him, “she seems very angry.”

“Well they did try to eat her once,” Shine explained, “something like that’s bound to make you cross.”

“What’s she doing?” Lone-Hunter asked as he watched the girl reach into the pouch that rested on her hip.

“Don’t know,” Admitted Shine, she’d seen Dark’s pouch but hadn’t asked what she carried in it; she’d thought it might be Dark’s personal magic and she didn’t want to intrude.

Watching closely, Shine and Lone-Hunter saw Dark halt about five-two-hands of paces short of where the Big-Nasty was standing and shouting at them. Frowning, Shine watched Dark pull a long piece of leather from her pouch. The leather thing seemed to be made of two narrow thongs with a small pouch in the middle; Shine had no idea what it could be. Fascinated she watched as Dark gathered the two loose ends into her strong-hand and then take a stone from her pouch and put it into the little pouch with her weak-hand.

Still mystified, Shine watched as Dark whirled the pouch carrying the stone around her head at the end of the thongs. Gasping Shine watched as Dark let go of one thong and the stone flew so fast towards its target that it blurred. In an instant, Shine realised that the weapon Dark was using was something like a throwing stick but for stones. Jumping a little with surprise, she saw the stone hit Big-Nasty on the forehead with a hollow thud. With a surprised look on his face that made Shine giggle, Big-Nasty fell to the ground dead.

For a moment all was silent as the other beast-man stared stupidly at their dead leader. With a shout, Dark broke the spell as she ran towards Big-Nasty’s body. Putting another stone into her whirly-pouch she swung it around her head a few times before sending the stone arcing towards another beast-man. There was another loud thud as the stone hit and another beast-man fell dead on the ground. This proved too much for the tribe and they turned and fled pursued by more of Dark’s flashing stones.

0=0=0=0


	11. Chapter 11

11.

Homecoming.

As predicted the little party arrived back at their home cave the following day just as the sun was slipping from its high point. There joy at returning home was spoilt by the news they received when they walked into the cave. Everyone was wailing and crying, even Chase and as soon as Shine found out the reason for all the crying she started to cry too.

Looking around the cave at all the sobbing people, Dark started to feel nervous; why were Shine’s people crying? Was it because of her? Were they frightened of her, had she broken one of their laws and were now frightened of what was going to happen? Backing towards the mouth of the cave, Dark decided it was time to leave; she’d been foolish to think that she’d be welcome here. After all who’d want anything to do with someone who’d left their own tribe? Bumping into something tall and muscular, Dark turned to find herself looking up into Lone-Hunter’s face, he at least wasn’t crying but he did look sad.

“Where are you going?” He asked quietly, but loud enough to be heard over all the sobbing.

“Dark go now,” Dark told the big hunter, “Shine no want Dark now.”

“What do you mean?” Lone-Hunter looked down at Dark in surprise, “Of course Shine wants you here, more than ever now.”

“No,” Dark shook her head sadly as she gestured to where Shine hugged a pretty girl, “Shine has girl, Dark go now.”

“That’s Dusk!” Lone-Hunter explained with just a hint of a smile, “Dusk is my mate and Shine’s sister.”

“Sister?” Dark frowned which made Lone-Hunter smile a little more.

“Yes,” Lone-Hunter nodded, “look, while we were away, Mother was eaten by lions, that’s why everyone’s so sad. Normally a new member of the clan is met with happy faces and lots of hugs.”

Remembering his own arrival at the cave the previous winter, Lone Hunter sighed. Everyone (even Chase) had been nice to him, particularly Dusk who’d brought him his food at the welcoming party. Looking down at Dark he realised how this must all look to her and the slight smile he’d had on his lips slowly faded away.

“Come,” Lone-Hunter put his hand on Dark’s shoulder and led her outside where they sat down next to the fire.

“Why you not cry?” Dark asked as she warmed her hands and toes by the fire.

“It’s not the custom in my birth-tribe,” Lone-Hunter explained, “at least not for hunters.”

“You not sad?” Dark was trying to understand what was going on here, “You not like ‘Mother’?”

“Mother,” Lone-Hunter paused and chose his words carefully, the truth was he’d not thought Mother was a very good leader, “was a good woman who lead the clan as well as she knew how and she was Shine and Dusk’s blood-mother.”

“Ah!” Dark nodded her head in understanding, now she realised why Shine was acting the way she was.

Although Dark didn’t know who her mother was as it wasn’t the custom in her birth-tribe to have family groups, she’d seen it in other tribes. Often wondering what it was like to have someone to care about her, she looked back into the cave to where Shine and her sister rocked back a forth in each others arms. Suddenly Dark felt very sad, not for Mother, who she’d never met, but for Shine who was now so sad. Getting up, she left Lone-Hunter by the fire and walked over to where Shine and Dusk crouched on the floor, putting her arms around both of them and joined them in there grief.

0=0=0=0

“Shine?” Night-Watcher touched Shine gently on the shoulder.

It was now several days after Mother’s death and the snow lay thickly on the ground covering the mound where the remains of Mother’s body lay. Sitting on a rock huddled up in a fur cloak, Shine had been staring at the grave. The hurt she felt at her mother’s passing had not gone, and it would not pass until the skins of the lions that’d eaten her were decorating the cave wall. It was as if the lions knew they were in danger because they’d not been seen since the attack.

Having gone to the river to calm down after hitting Dusk, Mother had decided she’d try to catch some fish as a peace offering to both Dusk and Elm. Leaving her baby in the fork of a tree she’d stood in the river, she must have caught several fish because One-Eye found them on the river bank when he and Night-Watcher had started to search for mother when she’d not come back to the cave. From the tracks the lions must have come on her while she was still fishing and distracted. They’d dragged her into the woods and eaten her there. Luckily the lions didn’t notice the baby and it had been his cries that had drawn One-Eye to the spot.

“Shine,” Night-Watcher repeated quietly, “there’s things to be done and said.”

“Of course,” Shine sniffed and wiped away a tear from her eye, “what’s up?”

“Well,” Night-Watcher looked at his step-daughter uncomfortably, “there is the matter of who’s going to be Mother now.”

“Yeah, okay,” Shine turned to give Night-Watcher her full attention, “who’s it going to be?”

“You,” Night-Watcher told her simply.

“Me?” Shine looked at the old man as if he’d become moon-struck, “I can’t be Mother.”

“Well,” Night-Watcher hesitated for half a breath, “You don’t want Chase to be Mother do you?”

“Wouldn’t be my first choice,” Shine agreed.

“And Dusk’s too young,” Night-Watcher pointed out.

“What about Elm?” Shine wanted to know.

“You know better than that,” Night-Watcher gave her a thin lipped smile, “the Wise-Woman can’t be Mother as well.”

“Oh!” The truth bloomed in Shine’s mind like some malignant, stinking flower; she was going to have to take over the role of Mother to the Clan. “B-But I don’t want to be Mother!” Shine said with more than a hint of panic in her voice, “F-for a start I’m not a mother…how can I be Mother if I’m not a mother, answer me that, huh?”

“That little problem can be solved by finding you a mate,” Night-Watcher pointed out slowly.

“But I’ve got a mate!” Shine replied urgently.

“Who?” Night-Watcher asked looking more than a little confused, “My eyes aren’t what they were but I’m sure I’d have noticed a new hunter in the cave.”

“Well there you are!” Shine announced triumphantly, “You’re eyes must be worse than you thought, didn’t you see Dark?”

“But she’s a girl,” Night-Watcher pointed out the obvious.

“But she _is_ a hunter,” Shine smirked mischievously.

“True,” Night-Watcher nodded his head, the girl was definitely a hunter, she and Lone-Hunter had brought home plenty of food for the clan.

“And she’s my mate,” Shine added.

“Your…” Night-Watcher looked at Shine in surprise, “…she’s you mate?” Shine nodded as Night-Watcher added, “But she’s a girl!”

“I had noticed,” Shine giggled at the memory of what she and Dark had been doing under their furs last night.

“But I thought you and she were…” Night-Watcher’s voice trailed off to nothing.

“Just keeping warm?” Shine asked lifting an eyebrow, “So much more than just keeping warm Night-Watcher.”

“Oh,” Night-Watcher stared at the ground at his feet, “but…but a girl can’t mate with another girl it’s not allowed.”

“Who says?” Shine demanded.

“The Mother of the Clan,” Night-Watcher shot back.

“But I’m the Mother so I say I can!” Shine smiled and crossed her arms over her breasts, her argument was unbeatable.

“So,” Night-Watcher smiled broadly, “you agree that you should be Mother of the Clan?”

“WHAT!” Shrieked Shine as realisation that she’d been tricked dawned, “Why you…!”

“I might be old,” Night-Watcher said in that insufferably superior way he had of talking, “but I’m not stupid and I’m quite aware of what you and Dark do under those furs of yours.” He paused before speaking again, “I expect every creature in the valley can guess what the pair of you are doing!”

“Oh,” Shine slumped and started to sulk, “you tricked me, fine Mother I’ll be if I let an old man trick me.”

“Hey,” Night-Watcher replied indignantly, “less of the old if you don’t mind.” Night-Watcher became serious again, “Look, you’ll be a fine Mother. I’ll be here to help you and that Dark of yours seems a sensible girl I’m sure she’ll support you.”

“Yeah, well, but,” Shine screwed up her face in indecision, “I’m still not sure, Night-Watcher. What if I mess up? What if I can’t make the big choices? What if I get someone eaten?”

“Yes,” Night-Watcher sighed heavily, “you’ll make mistakes at first, but I doubt you’ll get anyone eaten.” Night-Watcher sat in silence for a moment as he tried to remember something. “There’s some old magic that might help…”

“Go on,” Shine encouraged the old man.

“Well its for when someone like you needs to make a life changing decision,” Night-Hunter explained, “I’ll have to look at my cave-paintings to get the details, but its not too difficult.”

“So, what do we do?” Shine had decided she could use all the help she could get.

“There’s a glade in the woods,” Night-Watcher pointed across the valley, “we go there and I cast a spell while you eat one of Elm’s mushrooms and then you go off on a sort of spirit quest and ask who ever you meet what you should do.”

“Sounds simple enough,” Shine nodded her head, “When can we start?”

“Tomorrow?”

0=0=0=0

**Very many years later.**

Pulling off the main track, Giles brought his red, BMW convertible to a halt behind a large clump of sage brush. Climbing out of the car he and Buffy walked around to the rear of the car, although they were in the desert it was winter and it was surprisingly cold. Cold enough for Buffy to be wearing a long, brown sheepskin coat.

“What’s in the trunk?” Buffy asked as she stood back to watch Giles open the lid.

“Supplies,” Giles informed her.

“Supplies?” Buffy moved so she could see into the trunk, “I was wondering about that,” she told her watcher lightly, “Like food, water, maybe even a compass?”

“What about a book, a gourd and a bunch of twigs?” Giles emerged from the trunk with exactly those things in his hands.

“I don’t think I’ll be that hungry,” Buffy replied slightly worried; visions of herself and Giles dying in the desert came all too readily to her mind.

“They’re for me,” Giles pointed out, “This way,” he gestured to a path at the side of the track, “You see the location of the secret place is a closely guarded secret…”

“You mean its secret?” Buffy asked with an impish grin on her face.

“Well yes,” Giles hesitated as he realised he was being made fun of, he carried on with his explanation anyway, “I can’t take you there myself, I’ll have to perform a ritual to transfer my guardianship of you to a guide…this’ll do.”

The odd couple stopped in a clearing in the sage brush that was hidden from the main track and out of sight of Giles’ car.

“A guide but no food or water,” Buffy pointed out what she hoped wasn’t the fatal flaw in Giles’ plan, “So, this guide leads me to this secret place, and a week later it leads you to my bleached bones?”

“Buffy, please,” Giles tutted at Buffy’s ignorance, “It takes more than a week to bleach bones.”

With a smirk, Giles got down on his knees and started to arrange his bunch of magic twigs into a rough circle.

“So,” Buffy asked, “how does it start?”

“I, erm,” Giles seemed slightly embarrassed as he explained the ritual, “jump out of the circle then I jump back in and, erm,” he eyed Buffy for any sign that she wasn’t taking this seriously, “shake my gourd.”

“I know this ritual!” Buffy exclaimed, “The ancient shamans were called upon to do the hokey-pokey and turn themselves around!”

“Go quest,” Giles told her as he stood up ready to begin the ritual.

Standing with a slight smile on her face, Buffy knew she was embarrassing her watcher, she watched as Giles jumped out of the circle and then jumped back in and shook his gourd as promised.

“And that’s what its all about…” Buffy announced as seriously as she could.

0=0=0=0

Somehow Buffy found herself alone in the desert, she was walking along the crest of a ridge covered in large, weirdly shaped rock formations without any real idea how she’d got there. Hearing a growl off to her left, she turned to see a mountain lion sitting on the sand not a dozen yards away from her.

“Hello Kitty,” Buffy said slightly uncertainly.

Watching as the cat got up and walked by her, Buffy realised that this must be her guide and followed the animal. Following the cat for a long way along the ridge, Buffy eventually came to a spot where she could look out over a wide expanse of desert. Suddenly the cat was no longer there and Buffy sort of knew that she’d come to the secret place. The sun was low in the sky casting long orange shadows across the desert. Which was odd because Buffy knew it couldn’t be more than about midday. Sitting down on a stone she waited and contemplated the silent desert.

0=0=0=0

Waking up with a start, Buffy found herself still sitting on the rock, but now it was night time and someone had built a fire.

“Come and get warm by the fire,” a female voice called to her from the opposite side of the flames.

“W-what…?” Still a little stunned from waking up to find it was night, Buffy didn’t move.

“Come-on,” called the voice, “it’s a good fire, do you like it?”

“Y-yeah,” Buffy walked over to the fire and sat down cross-legged opposite the blonde girl in the skins who sat only a few feet away from her.

Frowning slightly, Buffy looked at the girl closely, this was spooky; the girl looked suspiciously like what she’d been told she’d looked during the ‘Bad Beer’ incident. For a moment Buffy wondered if this was an alternate version of herself. Somehow she’d expected to meet someone more…more impressive, than this girl.

“Did you light the fire?” Buffy asked to make conversation as the girl seemed willing to just sit there and stare into the flames.

“Yes,” the girl smiled proudly, “do you like it?”

“Erm,” Buffy looked at the girl, she seemed very proud of having built the fire, “it’s like very warm.”

“Good,” the girl’s smile got wider, “my mate Dark showed me how to start a fire, now I can do it anywhere…do you want to see how?”

“Erm, no…no thanks,” Buffy replied, this wasn’t how she’d expected things to go, “nice thought the fire is…erm, are you the first slayer?”

“Slayer?” The girl looked at Buffy through the flames, “I’m Shine of the Valley Clan of the Tribe.”

“Hi,” Buffy didn’t know what else she was supposed to say, but then she remembered her manners, “I’m Buffy, by the way.”

“Buffy?” The girl Shine seemed to be tasting the word, “That’s a erm…” the cave-girl hesitated as she tried to think of something nice to say about Buffy’s name, “…pretty name.”

“Why does everyone disrespect my name?” Buffy sighed; it was obvious, however, that this Shine girl wasn’t the person she needed to talk to.

“Ah I see you want to ask a question?” Shine said after the silence between herself and Buffy had stretched to embarrassing proportions.

“Y-yeah,” Buffy wondered how the girl knew, then she asked herself why would a cave-girl or indeed anyone else be sitting out in the desert in the middle of the night.

“Do you live here?” Shine asked abruptly, “I ask because it doesn’t look like a good place to hunt…but you have a nice coat.”

Suddenly the girl had crawled around the fire and was examining Buffy’s sheepskin coat, running her grubby fingers along the stitching.

“Nice,” Shine nodded her head, “this must have taken days to sew together.”

Buffy found herself checking out Shine’s fur lined jacket and trousers, they looked surprisingly well made; blinking her eyes, she tried to get herself back on track.

“I have a few questions about being the slayer,” Buffy found herself trying to back away from the girl, there was no polite way of saying it, she smelt pretty ripe. “What about love, I don’t just mean boyfriend love…”

“Boyfriend love?” Shine thought about the word, it was new but she seemed to understand its meaning, “You mean love for your mate?”

“I haven’t got a mate,” Buffy said finding the conversation flying off at a tangent.

“No mate?” Shine looked concerned and a little sad, “Ah! I see,” Shine smiled kindly, “you’re afraid that being this Slayer will stop you finding a mate?”

“Well,” Buffy felt a little confused, that wasn’t what she’d really meant to ask, “that’s not what I meant to say I…”

“You have lots of love, Buffy the Slayer,” Shine told her and then went on to explain. “Your love for your clan is what makes you who you are.”

“It is?” Buffy asked unconvinced, “I gotta say it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.”

“I was told to tell you that ‘death is your gift’…” Shine wasn’t sure who’d told her but the urge to say the words couldn’t be denied.

“Death is my gift?” Buffy didn’t sound impressed.

“I think it means that your death will give others the gift of life,” Shine explained, “I think you’ll go beyond the skies willingly because of the love you have for all your clan.”

“Clan? I-I’m going to die?” Buffy was shocked she knew she’d have a short life being the Slayer but she’d always hoped she’d get to see Dawn grow up.

“You’ve a battle coming soon?” Shine asked, Buffy nodded, “You’ll die and go beyond the sky.” Shine looked at Buffy sadly, but then brightened slightly, “Don’t worry, beyond the sky is good, its never winter there and the hunting is always good and you’ll get to be with your mother again.”

“I will?”

“Yes,” Shine nodded her head again, “but your death means others will live and they will remember you forever, so you’ll never die in their hearts.”

“Oh,” Buffy sighed sadly.

“Now I have a question to ask you,” Shine spoke softly.

“Go on,” Buffy sniffed and brushed away a tear, “ask away…”

0=0=0=0


	12. Chapter 12

12.

**The End of Summer.**

Sitting on her lion skin rug outside of the hut that she shared with Dark, Shine played with her little brother, Lucky. The clan had named him ‘Lucky’ because he’d been lucky to have been born. Then he’d been lucky that his mother had left him high in a tree where the lions couldn’t get to him. His luck continued when his cries had helped One-Eye find him after his mother had been eaten; next he was lucky that Elm still had milk and was willing to feed and look after him. Lastly he was lucky when his father’s new mate, Star, who already had two children by her dead mate, took him as one of her own.

Of course, Lucky wasn’t the only new child born to the clan since last winter; Elm had a little girl. The Wise Woman had admitted to Shine that she’d been relieved when the baby had come out looking more like her than the child’s father. Her ears weren’t pointed and she wasn’t particularly hairy and unlike Cub, she hadn’t grown sharp pointed teeth.

Chase had given birth to a healthy boy and as Elm had predicted she’d soon lost all the extra fat she’d built up during her pregnancy. Now she had a new baby to care for and she felt pretty again, Chase was a much nicer person to live with and the jokes about her quickly faded to nothing. Soon all the hunters were jealous that One-Eye could catch himself such a pretty mate.

Yes it had been a good summer in so many ways. The tribe had learnt to build huts and use the slings, Dark had taught them to make. The huts meant that there was somewhere to shelter from the summer rain and you didn’t get soaking wet while you tried to sleep. But the most important gift Dark had given the tribe was the sling. That simple thing of leather meant that even women and children could drive off predators. A hunter could break the leg of even the biggest bison with a single stone making it easier and safer to spear and kill. Hunters like Shine and Dark could kill with a single stone at ranges further than anyone could throw a spear even with a throwing stick. The sling had meant that more hunts were successful meaning more meat got back to the tribe. More meat meant there’d be more food over the cold winter months and fewer babies would die. 

Looking up at the sun, Shine saw that it was nearly time for Dark and the other hunters to be coming home; they’d been away looking for the mammoths. It was that time of the year when the tribe would be heading south again to spend the winter in the valleys south of the mountains. It was also the time of the year that the mammoths started coming south to escape the harsh winters on the plains to the north. It was the custom since before anyone could remember to hunt the mammoth at the end of summer. The meat they got would last them until they got settled in their winter home.

Scooping up Lucky in her arms, Shine carried him over to his stepmother and father’s hut, Star was sitting outside the hut making a basket while she watched her other two boys play at hunting imaginary mammoths. With a smile she took the child from Shine’s arms.

“Has he been good?” Star asked as she put the baby to her breast.

“Of course,” Shine grinned thinking that next year she’d have her own baby…with luck. “He’s always good.”

“You’re right,” Star nodded her head, “he’s no trouble at all,” she nodded towards her own boys, “not like those two night-monsters.”

“Kids today, huh?” Shine shrugged before taking her leave of Star and heading back to her own hut.

Hearing a commotion on the other side of the camp, Shine ran down to the river to see the hunters approach from the other side. By the way they waved their weapons and cried out they’d found the mammoth herd and it was close by. Feeling like an over excited little girl, Shine ran back to her hut and crawled inside. Sitting in the dark, she frowned. Huts were good for keeping the weather off but they were dark inside and you couldn’t have a fire. You could leave the flap open to let out the smoke, but that let in the wind and the rain. Shine had thought about cutting a hole in the roof but that of course while letting out the smoke would let in the rain worse than leaving the flap open. However hard she thought about it she couldn’t think of a way to solve this puzzle.

However, in the mean time the dark of the hut would be her friend. Crouching near the flap hole, Shine waited for Dark to return so she could surprise her. Hearing her mate outside calling to her, Shine stifled the excited giggles that almost escaped her mouth and crouched as still and as quiet as she could, almost as if she was waiting to pounce on some unsuspecting prey, which in a way she was.

Climbing into the hut, Dark felt something leap onto her from the dim interior. Just for a moment she thought that some animal had got into the hut and was trying to eat her; she was half right. Tumbling across the hut’s skin covered floor, Dark tried to fight off her laughing mate for a while and then gave up and let her pin her to the floor. Sitting astride Dark’s tummy, Shine smiled down at her mate before leaning forward to lip-nuzzle her (a part of Shine’s mind told her that they still needed a better word for lip-nuzzling, but that could wait).

“Missed you,” Shine said after breaking away from Dark’s soft, inviting lips.

“I’ve only been away a day,” Dark pointed out, “maybe I shoulda stayed away longer if this is the sorta welcome home I get.”

“Noooo,” Shine whined playfully as she lay down on top of Dark and buried her face in her mate’s hair, “one day is a day too long…”

“We found the herd,” Dark said as she felt Shine’s hands start to roam across her body.

“Stuff the herd!” Shine replied before she started to lip-nuzzle with Dark again, this time neither woman broke away.

0=0=0=0

After snuggling two or three times, Shine and Dark lay in the warm comfort of their hut. Lying with her ear pressed against Shine’s belly, Dark listened intently.

“Are ya sure there’s a baby in here?” Dark glanced up at her mate.

“Sure I’m sure,” Shine laughed; she’d snuggled with one of the un-mated hunters from another clan to get the baby inside her.

“How do y’know?” Dark frowned up at Shine.

“A woman just knows,” Shine informed her mate mysteriously; it was a fact that Dark showed little interest in having children of her own or indeed any knowledge of how to look after them.

In her birth-tribe only a relative few women had children and they didn’t have family clans like the tribe did. As a result, Dark was ignorant of even the basics of childcare. However, she did enjoy hunting the night-monsters more than Shine ever had. The truth was that Shine had never wanted to be the girl who hunted the night-monsters; she’d always just wanted to be someone’s mate and be Mother of the Clan when her mother gave up the post or died. Now she had what she’d always wanted and both she and Dark were happy with their lives.

“Will ya be alright to join the hunt tonight?” Dark wanted to know, “It won’t hurt the baby?”

“Only if I get stepped on,” Shine laughed, “in which case the baby being hurt will be the least of my worries.”

“If ya sure,” Dark persisted; secretly she was excited about the baby as Shine was.

“Dark!” Shine rolled her eyes and slapped her mate playfully, “I’m not a delicate flower, you know. I’m still as tough and strong as you…I mean who got ambushed when they came into the hut?”

“Why you!” Laughing, Dark pounced on Shine and pinned her to the floor.

“Shouldn’t we be getting ready for the hunt?” Shine struggled weakly not really wanting to free herself from Dark’s grip.

“Oh, I think we can fit in one more snuggle before we have to get ready,” Dark lowered herself down onto Shine as their lips touched and they started to snuggle for all they were worth.

0=0=0=0

Standing on the crest of the ridgeline, Shine, Dark and Lone-Hunter waited for the mammoths to come. The shallow valley lay before them peaceful under the twinkling stars and full moon, the long grass stirred in the cold breeze that came from the cold lands far to the north. The cold wind brought the mammoths and the mammoths were the harbingers of winter. 

The valley looked peaceful and innocent but it was perfect for the hunter’s needs; running down the centre of the valley was a cliff higher than three mammoths. The cliff couldn’t be seen until you were almost on top of it. It had even caught out one or two hunters in bright daylight who’d known it was there; they’d fallen to their deaths leaving their mates to find new partners.

Every year for as long as anyone could remember the mammoths walked south towards the warmer lands through the valley. Every year without fail the tribe took one or two mammoths to supply them with meat for their own trek south. Often Shine wondered why the mammoths didn’t go another way. Everyone new that mammoths lived as long as people, that they had long memories just like people did, so why did they walk into the same trap every year? Shrugging, Shine didn’t know the answer, perhaps the mammoths did things the same way every year for the same reason they appeared to know winter was coming.

Looking to her right, Shine caught her first glimpse of the herd. The big slow moving giants moved through the night towards the ambush sight. This made Shine shrug and ask herself why the mammoths kept moving at night? A thought struck her, maybe the mammoths did know they were going to be attacked, perhaps they thought the dark would make it harder for the people to attack them. But Shine knew it would all be in vain, the tribe had fire and there was no defence against that.

“Big,” Dark commented; Shine remembered that this would be the first time she’d hunted the mammoths.

“Yes they’re big,” Shine agreed, “but there doesn’t seem to be as many of them as there were last year…Lone-Hunter?”

“I think you’re right,” although Lone-Hunter couldn’t see as well at night as Shine and Dark, the mammoths, as Dark had pointed out, were big and hard to miss. “Every year, or so I’m told,” Lone-Hunter said quietly, “there’s been less mammoths than there were last year.”

“What if one day,” Shine gave her friend a worried look, “the mammoths don’t come?”

“Then we’ll hunt something else,” Lone-Hunter pointed out, “hunting’s easier with the slings Dark gave us.”

Feeling Dark swell with pride next to her, Shine smiled knowing that what Lone-Hunter had said was the truth. If one year the mammoths didn’t come it wouldn’t be such a disaster as it might have been before Dark brought the slings to the tribe. Turning, Shine looked down the slope behind her to where the other hunters of the tribe waited around the fire. They each carried a spear and a torch; the spears wouldn’t be used until after the hunt was over. It would be the torches that would be their main weapon.

“Down,” Lone-Hunter called softly; the three hunters crouched down as the mammoths got closer, it was almost time.

Turning again, Shine waved her arm to signal the hunters to light their torches and spread out in a line just on the fire side of the ridge where the mammoths couldn’t see them. A young boy ran up the slope carrying three lit torches for the hunters on the crest. Shine signalled the excited boy to stay back. It was still too early for the hunt to begin.

“When do we start?” Dark whispered; her eyes shining bright in the moonlight, she was as eager as an inexperienced hunter to start the hunt.

“When the lead mammoth gets level with that stone,” Lone-Hunter pointed to a lone stone that marked the edge of the cliff, “that’s when we start and not before.”

“Okay, okay,” Dark nodded her head but Shine could tell her mate wanted to rush forward and start the hunt now.

Resting her hand on Dark’s arm, Shine tried to calm her mate, it seemed to work because she didn’t charge at the mammoths but remained squatting in the long grass.

“Any moment now,” Lone-Hunter tensed as he raised his arm ready to signal the other hunters forward; the boy crept forward and handed the hunters their torches.

Just as the lead mammoth drew level with the stone, Lone-Hunter jumped to his feet followed an instant later by Shine and Dark. Together they shouted and waved their torches above their heads as the rest of the hunters ran up and over the ridgeline. Together the hunters swept down in a long line towards the mammoths. Everyone shouted their hunting cries and waved their torches about so as to drive the mammoths towards the cliff.

Surprised by the sudden appearance of the tribe the mammoths trumpeted their alarm. Some turned towards the hunters while others milled about in panic. The hunters knew that they must keep the mammoths panicked. If the great, hairy creatures formed themselves into a defensive ring the hunt would be over before it had really begun.

Screaming and yelling as she got closer to the herd, Shine waved her torch in front of a mammoth’s eyes. Trumpeting loudly the mammoth retreated from the small, bright dancing thing that had suddenly appeared from out of nowhere. Taking several steps backwards the mammoth seemed to realise just how small and puny the light-creature was. Trumpeting again, this time in rage the mammoth charged towards Shine.

Dancing out of the way of the charging beast, Shine watched it carefully over her shoulder as she ran. Always aware of the position of all the hunters around her and where the other mammoths stood, Shine led the beast away from the herd and towards her fellow hunters. Shouting a warning, Shine saw the first sling stone fly through the air and heard the meaty thump as they hit the mammoth. Before the hunt had started it had been decided that a sling stone wouldn’t kill a mammoth, but it would hurt one and drive it off…with luck.

The mammoth stopped in its tracks as the stone hit it, but it didn’t turn away. Coming to a halt, Shine turned to face the beast as more stones made the dust rise from its great shaggy coat. There was something odd happening here, something that had never happened before and it made Shine feel uneasy like she did when…

Before her wide eyes the great mammoth sat back on its haunches and trumpeted loud enough to make Shine’s body shake like she had a fever. The mammoth lifted it trunk to the night sky and Shine saw it start to change in the moonlight. It was like when Moon-Wolf changed from being a wolf into a man, only the mammoth wasn’t changing into a man, it was changing into something more terrible.

Standing with her torch in one hand and spear in the other, Shine watched in wonder as the mammoth turned into a parody of a mammoth. A mammoth with claw-like hands, long sharp teeth and evil, red glowing eyes. A hunter strayed too close to the terrible creature and was snatched up in its trunk. Screaming and struggling the hunter was lifted off his feet to be placed in the night-monster-mammoth’s mouth. Wincing at the sound of the hunter’s bones being crushed as the night-monster bit down, Shine threw away her torch.

“BACK!” She yelled as loudly as she knew how, “EVERYONE BACK!”

Hearing a stone whiz by her ear, Shine saw Dark load another stone into her sling, knowing what she had to do, Shine ran over to join her mate as the other hunters retreated back over the ridge.

“Is this normal?” Dark asked with a grin as she loaded yet another stone and started to whirl it above her head.

“No,” Shine took her own sling from around her waist as she saw Dark’s stone hit the night-monster in the face with terrific force.

The air was split with a terrific *CRACK!* as the stone hit home and the night-monster staggered back on its hind legs. Making a roaring sound more than a trumpeting sound the night-monster started to walk towards the two hunters on its rear legs, almost like a person. The two women whirled their slings and sent stones whizzing towards the night-monster with fantastic force, but still the night-monster advanced. It hesitated and roared in pain as each stone hit but it still came on determined to trample and eat the little annoying creatures.

“This isn’t going to stop it,” Dark pointed out as she sent another stone at the night-monster.

“We’ll have to spear it or something,” Shine called whirling her sling once more.

Unexpectedly a spear appeared in the side of the night-monster. Looking over to their left, Shine and Dark saw Lone-Hunter fit another throwing spear into his throwing stick.

“You didn’t think I’d leave you to have all the fun, did you?” He laughed and threw his spear.

“If you get killed,” Shine cried, “Dusk will never speak to me again!”

“Then we better kill this thing!” Lone-Hunter launched another spear at the creature who’d now stopped and appeared undecided who to crush and eat first.

“Keep it distracted!” Shine called as she dropped her sling and picked up her spear.

This was the new spear that One-Eye had made to replace her old one. This spear was longer than her old spear but just as sturdy. The spearpoint was made of a long incredibly sharp piece of flint that One-Eye had chosen especially from the very best flint so it was unlikely to break.

Moving in under cover of her friend’s stones and spears, Shine clutched her spear ready to thrust it into the belly of the night-monster. The creature had halted its advance as it tried to pull the spears from its flank and ward off the stones that hurtled towards it. At first it didn’t notice Shine until she was almost within spear thrusting range. When it did it stood up on its back legs and towered over the diminutive hunter. It roared in anger as it took a swipe at the little creature that dared challenge it. 

Dodging under its clumsy lunge, Shine stabbed the night-monster in the belly. Hot, foul smelling blood sprayed over her body as the beast screamed with pain. Withdrawing her spear, Shine stabbed again and again. Through the red-mist that fell over her eyes, Shine was aware of Dark and Lone-Hunter stabbing at the night-monster with there own spears. Rolling on the ground the creature writhed in agony as the hunter’s spears cut into it time and time again. Eventually the night-monster stopped moving and a few moments later the hunters stopped spearing it, it was dead. They stood panting for breath around the creature’s carcass resting on their blood-wet spears.

“So,” Dark panted, “what do we do now? Eat it?”

“EWWW!” Shine replied looking at her mate in disgust.

“HA!” Lone-Hunter laughed, but sobered as he looked around, “Looks like the herd got away.”

“Whatever,” Shine said tiredly, “it doesn’t matter we can hunt something else.” She paused to think for a moment, “Perhaps this is a warning,” she gestured at the dead night-monster, “maybe we shouldn’t hunt the mammoths any more.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Lone-Hunter agreed.

“So, if we’re not going to eat it what do we do with it?” Dark wanted to know.

“Leave it for the scavengers,” Shine said as she turned away from the corpse and started to walk slowly back to camp.

“Whatever ya say,” Dark agreed, “Hey!” she grinned at Shine her teeth white in the moonlight, “Ya wanna snuggle when we get home? Ya know how I like to snuggle after a fight.”

“Snuggle?” Shine groaned as Dark chuckled quietly, “Yeah why not,” she sighed, “but only after I’ve washed off all this blood.”

“But its the blood makes ya look so snuggleable,” Dark pointed out.

“You’re gross, you know that don’t you?” Shine laughed.

“But that’s why ya love me,” Dark replied with confidence.

“Yeah,” Shine replied with a sad sigh, “I expect it is.”

The End.

0=0=0=0


End file.
